


when the world comes crashing down (I'm here)

by Starry_Fantasies (starfleur)



Series: when the world snippets [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: 2/1/18: authorsan is alive theyre just dying in college atm, All hail Kat Queen of Rarepair Hell, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Feelses everywhere, Fluff and Angst, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I am shipper trash in rare ship hell, M/M, OTP for the win, Orochimaru feels, Pre-Naruto Canon Era, SO, Sakumo feels, Slow Burn, Third Shinobi War, istg im not going on hiatus for a year, it's still pre slash now, so much research like oh my god, theoretically soon, this is all blackkat's fault, updates will resume when I'm no longer suffering from self-hatred and anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 06:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 61,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7350118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfleur/pseuds/Starry_Fantasies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Broken," the report says. "Easy prey."</p><p>Hatake Sakumo is just as lost and abandoned as he is.</p><p>Orochimaru sees his chance and takes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the report

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Snake In the Grass, a Wolf At the Door](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348309) by [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. It's all blackkat's fault. Her SakumOro fics have hooked me on this new OTP. And...well. To make a long story short, I'm in rare-ship hell, there are only three freaking stories under the SakumOro tag and all of them are Kat-sama's (and I've _read all of them already_ ) and I am now desperate enough that I've written my own fic.  
> Please enjoy.

Orochimaru is all of 27 when Hatake Sakumo sparks the Third Shinobi World War.

It doesn't really affect him very much, sequestered as he is in his labs. It doesn't surprise him at all either because Iwa has been threatening war almost since the last one ended. He's a genius, not an idiot, after all.

It _does_ surprise him, however, when he realizes that Konoha is condemning the White Fang for choosing the lives of his comrades over the success of the mission.

It shouldn't, in hindsight. Konoha has always been a village that loved peace and sought to avoid conflict—the Shodaime had made it that way.

And yet…

And yet.

For all his denials and accusations, beneath his cruel façade, Orochimaru is still hurting, lost, and hopelessly-confused, with a loyalty to Konoha that runs soul-deep, imprinted on his very being since birth. He wants to believe the best of his ( _former,_ a cold voice sneers in his mind) village. He wants to believe that Konoha would support the sentiments of teamwork and comrades and _livesareimportant_ over peace.

He knows it doesn’t.

It doesn’t stop him from staring blankly at the report in his hands.

His hand-selected spies are as thorough as always, and it usually pleases him. Now, however…

He almost wants to forget the words on the page.

He reads the report again.

_The village is in rebellion against Hatake Sakumo. The civilians refuse to sell him wares, though they fear him enough to avoid attacking him. They spit at him and speak ill of him, especially within his presence. The shinobi, for the most part, do the same. Even the shinobi who were on his squad whom he saved shun him. He is anathema now, and broken enough that he would barely put up a fight. I have followed him to his home, where he resides with his son. Hatake Kakashi too shuns his presence and barely interacts with his father. The White Fang makes easy prey. The defenses around his home are rarely set up. Few people would miss his presence. His bounty is high. Should we kill him?_

Orochimaru closes his eyes.

No matter how indifferent he was to the deaths of people he had never met, he has not taken the life of a citizen of Konoha many times. Not never, because humans are corrupt, and assassinations are his specialty…but not often. The village preaches peace and trust, after all, for all that a Hidden Village can never be as fair and kind as Konoha promises, and too many suspicious deaths would be bad for its safe reputation.

At this point, however, very few people in Konoha would notice. Even fewer would object to Sakumo’s death; most would chalk it up to someone exacting vengeance. Sarutobi-sensei would possibly launch an investigation for justice, but…

It would be easy.

That is what makes up his mind.

Orochimaru sighs and rises.

Hatake Sakumo is broken and alone in a village that has abandoned and destroyed both of them.

He’ll take this chance to make him an offer he won’t refuse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Naruto timeline is very iffy, so I spent a good hour researching and worldbuilding. Most of this info is pulled from the character pages on the Naruto wikia, and the ages are approximate.  
> At the start of the series (Naruto is 12), Kakashi is 27, and Orochimaru is 50. Thus, there is an age difference of 23 years between Kakashi and Orochimaru.  
> Sakumo's mission fails 5 years before Kakashi becomes a jounin (Kannabi Bridge Mission, when Kakashi is 9-10). Kakashi is in the Academy at the time Sakumo is disgraced and later commits suicide. Since Kakashi graduates at age 5, within 1 year, he must be 4-5 years old at the time Sakumo's mission fails (Kakashi's birthday is in September, halfway through school year) and then his father dies when he is 5 (before Academy ends in April). For convenience's sake, I'm making it so that Sakumo's mission fails in August so Kakashi is 4 years old when Sakumo is disgraced and 5 years old when Sakumo commits seppuku.  
> That means that Orochimaru (whose birthday is in October) is 27 years old when Sakumo's mission fails.  
> I'm also using the headcanon that Sakumo sparked the Third Shinobi World War since there is no clear 'this is when and why the TSWW started.'
> 
> Hopefully, that makes sense. :)
> 
> This is a prologue, by the way. The next chapter will be longer. I promise.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	2. the start of a love-hate relationship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely responses from the last chapter! There are one or two references to Japanese culture in this one, so please read the following information (retrieved from http://blog.fromjapan.co.jp/en/fashion/all-about-kimono-and-yukata-the-differences-how-to-wear-buy.html)  
> 1\. Yukata are loose, thin casual kimono typically worn in the summer.  
> 2\. Women wear their kimono and yukata with an _ohashori_ which is a special fold in the fabric that adjusts the length of a kimono/yukata to be ankle-length (they are supposed to be longer than that).  
>  Please enjoy!

For a military village, Orochimaru muses, Konoha’s security really is quite deplorable.

Certainly, it would be able to keep out most genin and chuunin. Perhaps even a handful of jounin, if the guards really tried.

Then again, that’s the reason there are two tokujo hiding (and most likely bored out of their minds) in the watch-room hallowed in the wall high above the gate.

They are a precaution rarely ever needed: one chakra sensor to idly scan the chakra of the people entering the gate, one runner to send for help, and both talented combat fighters.

When Orochimaru passes through the gate, however, he is barely in disguise, draped in a simple black yukata and obi, tied with an _ohashori_ in the woman’s style.

A simple genjutsu hides the clan markings around his eyes and his paper-white skin. Although it has a distinctive feel to it and informs almost every shinobi that someone in the vicinity is using a genjutsu, it’s all but impossible to determine the caster, and it’s the one genjutsu no one will disrupt even if they notice it…because this is a genjutsu typically used by kunoichi in place of makeup, and no one’s rude enough (or suicidal enough) to disrupt _that_ particular illusion and thus warrant the ire of whichever kunoichi’s makeup just failed.

It’s perfect for him. A simple straw hat shades his features further, and then he is effortlessly a normal civilian (woman). Espionage has always been one of his talents, after all.

With a harmless civilian appearance and no weapons in sight, the chuunin let him pass without stopping him. They’re rather lax in their duties, but Orochimaru supposes he shouldn’t expect a pair of chuunin to stop an S-Class Sannin. His chakra is thrumming beneath his veins, but almost completely absent, and since the tokujo above cannot see him, they take no interest in his lack of presence. He glides through the gate, unnoticed.

And just like that, he’s infiltrated his former village.

*

He ducks into an alleyway the first chance he gets and reties the obi lower on his waist, loosening the yukata and doing away with the _ohashori_ , ignoring how the yukata now brushes the ground. It’s not that he minds the women’s style—but he prefers clothes to be loose. Very loose. And the way civilian ladies wear their yukatas are far from freeing.

Besides, it’s not like he needs his disguise anymore in his home village; he knows any number of shortcuts and hideaways and alcoves he can use from here.

So while he doesn’t let go of the genjutsu quite yet, nor the straw hat, this time, when he walks, it is with the boneless grace of a shinobi.

After about an hour of languid meandering, he draws near to the home of Hatake Sakumo. Around him, the world has already begun to slip into evening. In its last, most glorious hour, the sun’s dying rays stretch out across the sky. Golden chases amber that fades into pink which ebbs away into a beautiful pale blue that is slowly darkening, shade by shade, into the night sky. Faraway stars glimmer in the midnight blue of the sky above, in which a half-moon hangs, wreathed in mists and clouds illuminated by its light and that of the dying sun.

He watches, lips tilting up ever so slightly, as the world is bathed in golden light, and for just a moment, Orochimaru stops, breathing in the peace and familiarity of his surroundings. He discards the hat, drops the genjutsu, and, very slowly, lets his chakra unfurl. Not by much—not enough for the average jounin to sense from more than a few meters away, but enough that someone of Hatake’s calibre would be able to detect his presence at a distance of ten meters or so, subconsciously at the very least.

Then that brief reprieve too is over, and he turns and follows a dirt path almost overrun by the surrounding plants towards the back of the house.

There is a garden there.

There is also the chakra of Hatake Sakumo.

*

When he enters the garden, Hatake Sakumo is hunched over a stone bench, head in his hands. Orochimaru halts, one foot half-lifted.

He has never seen the man so defeated. Not when he severely injured his genin teammate with an experimental jutsu. Not when his sensei died on the front lines. Not even when his wife sacrificed herself when he was targeted by an assassin.

Hatake Sakumo is more broken than the report implied. More broken than anyone who knew the self-assured yet humble leader ever could have imagined.

Orochimaru sets his foot down noiselessly and pads over on silent feet. A distance away (three meters, he gauges), so as not to loom over Hatake, he stops and waits for Hatake to acknowledge him.

Some part of him points out that he’s been very strange recently. It would have been so much better (not to mention far simpler) to simply kill Hatake and collect the bounty. After all, even missing-nin have bills to pay, and Hatake’s bounty would most definitely cover him for at least the next five years.

On the other hand…

Orochimaru presses his lips together, eyeing the tired, bowed figure on the bench.

For all that he has abandoned Konoha, his village emphasizes loyalty, and it is a part of his being. It’s not something he can discard so easily, despite the fact that he has affected that callousness.

He sighs yet again.

He doesn’t know why he’s still debating whether or not he should attempt to help Hatake Sakumo. Subconsciously, he’s already made his decision.

The desire to sway Hatake Sakumo to come with him is why he’s making every effort to seem as harmless as possible. He has no weapons on him, he is wearing no illusions, and he has only a simple, loose yukata draped across his frame. 

He closes his eyes for one long beat and steels himself.

“Hatake,” he tries to make his voice as polite as he can. It’s never really worked before—Jiraiya always said he sounded snobbish and arrogant, but it’s not arrogance, it’s _self-respect_ —so Orochimaru isn’t particularly surprised when, after he looks up, Hatake appears far from charmed.

“Orochimaru. What’s one of the notorious Sannin doing back in Konoha?”

There’s a bite to the man’s tone, as if all he wants to do is to be left to wallow in his guilt alone in peace. Considering what Orochimaru knows about Hatake’s character—loyal, kind, good, (everything he’s not)—that very likely is what Hatake desires. He wouldn’t have said that otherwise.

Orochimaru does not miss the implications of Hatake’s sentence. The way he questions the presence of a Sannin, not a missing-nin, in the village of Konoha…hurts, almost. The Sannin are equivalent to the figureheads of Konoha. Outside of the Hokages, they are Konoha’s most famous shinobi and Konoha’s most cherished (excluding himself, but the villagers have always feared Orochimaru and his high kill count hasn’t changed that. If anything, it’s made it worse). Now, however, Tsunade has left Konoha behind, heartbroken, Jiraiya is rarely in the village, busy with his spying, and Orochimaru himself has defected. The Sannin are broken at the seams and no longer famous for their teamwork. They’re no longer Konoha’s strongest—they’re not even _Konoha’s_.

It’s a pointed jab, and it nearly works, but Orochimaru is determined to bring Hatake Sakumo with him when he leaves.

Inhale, “I was wondering how far Konoha has dragged you down, when all you’d done was follow its golden rule of teammates above all,” Orochimaru responds mildly.

A harsh, humorless laugh.

“As if a Sannin could tell me anything about that.”

This time, the jab hits home, and Orochimaru winces imperceptibly even as he keeps his voice level.

“For all that she failed me, I was once Konoha’s as well. They should not have condemned you for what you did.”

“I started a war, Orochimaru—”

“A war that would have come anyways; there’s nothing you could have done to stop it,” the snake-summoner interjects.

“A war that could have been avoided for just a little bit longer!” Hatake finishes, voice suddenly incensed, but just as swiftly, he deflates. His voice is flat and tired for the next few words, “Cut to the chase, Orochimaru. What do you want?”

Orochimaru presses his lips together; he had hoped their encounter to have gone better, but continues on with his plan nonetheless.

One step after another, he approaches Hatake Sakumo and extends his hand.

“Come with me,” he says in lieu of deflecting once more. “I won’t betray you like Konoha.”

“Like you betrayed Konoha?” Hatake murmurs, eyes weary.

“Like Konoha betrayed the both of us, like it will betray your son.”

He’s so, _so_ sure that it will work. Hatake is broken and lost, just like he himself once was. There is no one to turn to; those who once loved him now look upon him with revulsion, casting blame upon him.

He meets Hatake’s eyes with not-quite-soft but understanding eyes.

He knows it will work.

Hatake calls the ANBU on him instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha I bet you--  
> ...probably saw that coming a mile away, huh? *sighs*  
> Yes, Sakumo is very loyal to Konoha, so I couldn't just have him leave first chance he got. In canon, he didn't leave either. Instead, he chose to kill himself honorably (seppuku) rather than leave the village that abandoned him, so I tried to keep that loyal character here as well.
> 
> Logically speaking, Orochimaru should have just killed Sakumo, but as always, however, he's being overwhelmed by sentiment/emotion and not being logical. ;) which is the point. And ofc his harmless exterior would do absolutely nothing to hinder him from killing someone, but…well. It's a start, and it helps. Appearances are deceiving and all that :P
> 
> As promised, a longer chapter. As a warning, however, unlike many amazing authors I know, I post a chapter whenever I've finished it. I, sadly, do not have multiple chapters saved up in advance. That means that I have an undetermined updating schedule, though I am aiming for once a week, if possible. _However_ that means that if you want to see something happen in the story, you can propose it, and, if it works out, I will do my best to work it into my story
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	3. the other side and the lengths pride drives one to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pride is a thin line between 'I will die trying' and 'never again not on your life.' Well, Orochimaru's (now-injured) pride, at any rate. Sakumo has a different sort of pride, one of 'loyal' and 'Konoha' that teeters dangerously between 'if I fail I will exact punishment on myself _immediately_ ' and 'if I fail I will force myself to suffer slowly because death would be too merciful.' Oh, and just because he's Sakumo, he'll add in a third plane right smack dab in the middle called 'if I fail I will do my best to atone by torturing myself.' None of them, of course, ask for forgiveness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the almost-late update (I literally have like a few minutes until midnight therefore not late so there *sticks out tongue*) but I was stuck at the 600-word mark for the past four days. Yeah.
> 
> Please enjoy.

Every morning, Hatake Sakumo pulls himself out of bed and braces himself for the day. It never actually works—each glower is an arrow to the heart, each nose turned up is another slap to the face. 

Each reaction of hatred and contempt is a reminder of what had been and what he had done.

The world used to be laid out in simple, clear lines.

He fulfilled his orders, completed his missions, kept his teammates safe, fought for himself and his comrades, and did his best to keep everyone alive and happy. There was no room for doubt or hesitation, and he didn’t _think_ ; he just _did_.

Sakumo rarely looked back. Sometimes, he remembered, reminisced, recalled, but he never regretted. He didn’t believe in ‘what if’s and ‘should have’s and ‘if only’s, but in ‘too late’s and ‘become stronger’s and ‘not again’s.

He moved forward, constant in an ever-changing world, a rock in the tempestuous sea, a dependable haven of steadfast loyalty with no room for uncertainty.

…Not anymore, though.

Not anymore.

Not when doubt and guilt and regret haunt his every waking moment, nightmares torment him every night, and tremors wrack his body as his mind is plagued with _I’ve started a war I’m killing innocents ripping apart families ruining everything whathaveIdone_.

He was strong, once. Unfaltering, self-assured, resolute. 

But he failed Konoha ( _why haven’t they killed me yet I deserve it no one would blame them **I** wouldn’t blame them_ ) and let everyone down ( _Hokage-sama never should have chosen me for such an important mission I’m such a failure and a fool_ ), and this abrupt change, this sudden onset of doubt, uncertainty, guilt, regret, _I wish this had never happened I wish I had never been **born**_ is ruining him.

Little by little, just as the sea beating against a cliff, it is destroying him, slowly but surely wearing away at him, bit by bit (until there’s nothing left).

Sakumo is a failure and has fallen below the lowest of lows.

He closes his eyes against the burn and forces himself to continue.

Perhaps that is why they have not yet killed him yet.

He doesn’t mind.

He deserves to suffer far more than heartbreak and slow torture, in the end.

*

When Orochimaru approaches him, Sakumo is world-weary, emotionally exhausted, mentally unhinged, and psychologically destroyed into itty-bitty pieces. The missing-nin's offer breaks him further, but at the same time strengthens his resolve into something unbreakably fragile.

_Oh Kami_ , he realizes. _Even he knows how terrible I am now, how far I've fallen from my pedestal as a hero. Orochimaru wants me to join him. A traitor, a betrayer of Konoha, **wants me to join him**._

It both crushes him and forges him into something stronger to know that.

Because the rest of the world might think he's become scum (and maybe he has, but Sakumo will never stoop to their level) and they might think him an untrustworthy oath-breaker, but Sakumo keeps his word (as he always had until he failed) and he would challenge the gods themselves before betraying the trust he once was given.

He _won't_ (because he's still Konoha, still hasn't been officially excommunicated even though he's the village pariah, even though he doesn't _deserve_ to be Konoha), and that stubborn refusal to surrender his loyalty, more than anything, is Sakumo at the core.

He doesn't deserve forgiveness, peace, requiem.

But with all his heart, mind, body, strength, soul, he will strive to atone for his punishment.

(It's Orochimaru that saves him in the end. Because Sakumo was strong and now he is weak but he absolutely _**refuses**_ to betray Konoha and it is this unflinching _vowconviction **promise**_ that keeps the will to live a fire burning in his soul).

So Sakumo steels himself and feels like he's alive for the first time in an eternity as what seemed like the weight of the world vanishes off his shoulders. His heart soars, his chakra sings through his veins, and _I'm alive I'm alive and I will not betray my home_ is the mantra his mind is chanting. He is free and strong and resolute, and it's like he's found his purpose again.

He smiles like a knife to the throat and feels his soul roar with laughter and life even as he sends up an emergency chakra flare.

Sakumo has found his purpose (with the unwitting help of Orochimaru), and he will not let go.

*

 _Hatake calls the ANBU on him instead_.

Well, actually, Hatake calls _every single capable shinobi in Konoha_ on him, and Orochimaru doesn’t know whether to be offended despite himself (he'd never even entertained the notion that he would be refused) or amused that the White Fang not only refused his offer but also tried to capture him. No one except his own team has dared to apprehend him before, not since Ame. His reputation precedes him, and few people are suicidal enough to go toe-to-toe with someone of his calibre. Then again, Hatake Sakumo is supposedly on par with the Sannin themselves. None of them have actually tried it before—they were all ( _had been_ , Orochimaru remembers with a displeased twist of his lips) fellow Konoha-nin, after all, and to determine their power levels in comparison to each other would have required far more than a simple spar. The majority of their repertoire of jutsu _were_ aimed to kill, after all.

Still, he doesn’t particularly care to find out now, so as shinobi approach and the White Fang of Konoha raises a saber crackling with the distinctive white chakra of the Hatake clan, Orochimaru sends him a rather pitying look.

____

“I think,” he tells Sakumo quietly, the barest hint of regret interlaced between his words, “that you will regret this.”

____

He disappears in his fastest shunshin, chakra thrumming in his veins, tightly-controlled and all but invisible that it is.

____

*

____

The ANBU arrive to Sakumo and an empty house, as do the jounin who responded to the emergency flare.

____

There is no evidence of anyone’s presence except his own.

____

“Paranoid, as well as foolish,” they scoff.

His reputation goes down even further, if that's possible, and it hurts to be scorned by the comrades who once looked up to him, but he does not waver in his will. If anything, Sakumo embraces the pain. _This is my punishment,_ dances behind closed, tear-filled eyes, right behind _I am alive this is my promise I will not let them down again_.

*

____

Orochimaru _strategically retreats_ into one of the safe-houses he has hidden and camouflaged in the forests of Fire Country and ponders (angrily) about the conundrum that is Hatake Sakumo.

____

There is no reason whatsoever for Hatake Sakumo to have refused him when Konoha was the one who excommunicated him first. Konoha no longer loved him; it reviled him, if anything. And yet...and yet.

____

Days pass with Orochimaru furiously replaying the scenario in his mind over and over again.

____

Hatake Sakumo was broken and worn yet still rejected him.

____

It just doesn't. Make. _Sense_.

____

And that's what infuriates him the most. How _dare_ Hatake reject him? Orochimaru rarely, if ever, offered to allow someone to accompany him--it was the highest of honors and Hatake bloody Sakumo just--rejected him. Like it was nothing.

____

He stews in indignant anger and stung pride for a good week.

____

Hatake Sakumo can _not_ naturally be so loyal.

____

There must be some, some (Orochimaru elegantly and subtly flails for an excuse--no, an _explanation_ ), some external influence upon him or something. Like, like loyalty seals!

____

He seizes onto that idea gratefully (desperately) and nods determinedly to himself.

____

Yes, that must be it.

____

Loyalty seals would make sense. It's been but a scant six months since he himself defected, so soon after both Jiraiya and Tsunade left and did not return. In under two years, Konoha has lost its three strongest fighters, with only Hatake Sakumo left of their calibre. The village leaders would have learned their lesson from the Sannin--they weren't made leaders because they were fools--and taken measures to prevent further defection.

____

The Snake Sannin nods to himself. It makes perfect sense. Danzo especially is one to push for such measures, and they definitely reinforced such compulsions after Konoha began to turn against Hatake.

____

Not that that meant Hatake's natural loyalty is anything to scoff at though. Hatake Sakumo is steadfastly and unchangingly faithful, embodying Konoha's ideals and promises, and only a blind fool would refuse to see that.

____

His current loyalty, on the other hand, is unnatural.

____

Yet take his intrinsic devotion, throw in the emphasis on patriotism and unflinching obedience to Konohagakure, add Danzo into the mix along with a few compulsion and loyalty seals, and his refusal to take Orochimaru's offer is...not unreasonable.

____

Orochimaru grimaces even as he admits that nothing he can do would be enough to sway the man.

____

But...

____

Well.

____

He isn't a seals master by any means, but for heaven's sake, he grew up with Jiraiya and Tsunade by his side, one true seals master and the girl who recreated the Strength of a Hundred Seal. There had been no way they would let him get away with the rudimentary seals knowledge most shinobi possessed, not that he had put up more than a token protest. After all, knowledge was power, and Orochimaru had never refused the prospect of learning more.

It will be difficult, but not impossible to weaken the seals once he's examined them properly, and child's play to remove them afterwards.

And just like that, it's decided.

Orochimaru is returning to Konoha, destroying those seals, and swaying Hatake Sakumo to his side, and nothing will stop him.

(The seals have to exist. Hatake can not be so loyal--

...except for the fact that he is)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh I make Orochimaru sound like an obsessive stalker kohai sorrynotsorry.
> 
> And yes I totally threw in that opening line reference to the Queen's "Snake, Wolf" *shamelessly beaming*
> 
> Also, author just realized timelines are a mess. Um. How do I explain this? Canon timeline is a mess too. Nothing is clear. So...let's just say canon has been tossed out the window ^W^"
> 
>  
> 
> ~~Oro left 10 years earlier than he did in canon (which was post-Kyuubi) and instead left right after it was determined that Minato would be the next Hokage because straw that broke the camel's back and all [previous straws include Nawaki and Dan's death (failing Tsunade), Jiraiya staying behind in Ame (one teammate choosing strangers over him), Tsunade leaving (being abandoned--not important enough--by the only other teammate), being under heavy suspicion of father-figure/sensei (my team doesn't prioritize/love/trust me), and being feared/rejected by Anko post-Cursed-Seal (I made her stronger but she no longer wants it what have I done) ]. Okie? Okie. :)~~
> 
>  
> 
> As always, if you find any errors, feel free to inform me.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	4. the difference between two promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One driven by pride and envy, the other driven by love and guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

Orochimaru’s is a promise driven by injured pride, a promise to see Hatake Sakumo abandon the village undeserving of the loyalty he gave him.

When his offer is rejected, for all the derisive amusement he projects, Orochimaru is offended, and his pride is stung. He decided to help the other shinobi in a (rare) moment of empathy, expecting the other to welcome him and be receptive to his suggestion. He expected to bond over the shared suspicion and dislike Konoha had directed towards both of them. Was that not what humans do? He had let go of the cold logic that had served him so well and even his pride to extend the offer and not ask for any other concessions. No ‘if you earn your keep’ or ‘if you swear allegiance to me.’ Only ‘come with me’ and ‘I will take care of you (you don’t have to do anything just stop destroying yourself and loving this empty hollow village that hates both you and me just come with me I promise you will be admired as you deserve please let me make you great once more).’ He had let go of his pride for _nothing_ , and something like that stings when your pride is _everything_.

(Because only pride remained after everything else faded away. Because Konoha was never his to begin with, and his team left him behind (never once turning back), so when the world abandoned him, all he had left was pride. He clutches to his pride and guards it viciously, fiercely, with the desperation of a dying man, even after he builds himself up again, because once, he was nothing except for pride, and Orochimaru never forgets)

In a way, the refusal is even worse because he cannot find a reason for it. Orochimaru does not comprehend such devotion to exist. It is not possible. Yet he’s exhausted every avenue available, Hatake is no more welcomed by Konoha, and…and Hatake Sakumo’s will is stronger by the day. Nothing works, but he does not—will not, _can_ not—accept it. It makes no sense, even though he’s a genius, to accept it (especially after all this time) would be to admit that he himself, genius prodigy that he is, is incapable of replicating that breath-taking willpower. It would be to admit that he fails, that he is not able to learn anything. The thought burns like ash in his throat, and his heart rages in response.

 _Never_ , he thinks viciously, and Orochimaru vows to see the once-beloved White Fang of Konoha defect to him.

(Secretly, in the farthest corner of his mind, a very, very small and swift thought flits over his mind. It only just barely exists, and he stamps it down almost immediately, but…

For the briefest moment, Orochimaru thinks of Sakumo’s devotion as something awe-inspiring, breath-taking, _ever-lasting_ , and wishes, just for a moment, that he could’ve experienced something like that)

*  
Sakumo’s is a promise driven by love and guilt, a promise to serve Konoha with his everything.

(Because)

When he was six years old, Sakumo pledged his life to his village.

 _I promise,_ he had whispered to his mother’s gravestone in a voice both unwavering and broken, _that I will cherish this village you gave your life for, that I will defend it against all threats, external or internal, that I will protect it with my life, my heart, my blood, my soul, my body, my strength, my everything._

It had taken him days to work up the courage to make that vow, because even at six, Sakumo knew he would never go back on his word.

But he had nevertheless leaned against the cold stone, a chill running through him that had nothing to do with the crisp autumn breeze and everything to do with the fact that he was _giving his life away_ , and made his vow, terrified out of his mind and tears running down his cheeks, but determined to let his mother’s spirit rest in peace in the knowledge that he would keep the place she loved safe.

Twenty-five years since, and he’s never once faltered. Failing his mission had torn open a gash of foreign self-doubt and shame in his heart, but it had no effect on his determination to protect Konoha with his everything except to make him further ashamed.

As one of Konoha’s paragons, he should have been strong enough to keep his teammates from needing to be saved in the first place, but he hadn’t and placed his squad in danger. He should have been strong enough to both keep his comrades safe and complete the mission, but he hadn’t been and had to choose between his team and his duty, both which were parts of his promise, neither of which he could place above the other.

He hadn’t been strong enough, and that is a failure that breaks his heart.

So barely a week after the Sannin approaches him, no longer raging in a storm of self-hatred and self-disgust, finally _doing something_ and feeling like he is atoning for his sins more and more with every moment, Sakumo lifts his head and smiles brightly (from his heart) at the Hokage Monument.

“I promise I’ll become stronger for the village you’ve given your lives for,” he murmurs, “that I will never waver in my loyalty, that I will give my everything for this village as well, that I will atone my sins, and that I will serve Konoha with all that I have.”

It’s a promise that will last a lifetime, and he knows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fyi the shortness is primarily because this was the best place to end it and it leads into the next chapter well :) ty guys for your patience haha
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	5. the beginning of something deeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orochimaru notices Sakumo wants to get stronger. He offers to make it happen. Sakumo…settles on a compromise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please recall that Sakumo’s promise was to get stronger for Konoha. Keyword is _stronger_ which is kinda Orochimaru’s niche.
> 
> Please enjoy.

_He came again,_ Orochimaru notes absent-mindedly as he crouches in a giant Hashirama tree with his chakra completely hidden, watching Hatake Sakumo and faintly approving of the older man’s endurance. _It’s the third time today, and it’s barely noon._

In August, Fire Country is sweltering at all hours of the day, not even night exempt from the heat. The air is muggy and thick, the wind brings only more hot air with it, and very few dare to venture out into the sunlight, under which the weather is even more unbearable.

Orochimaru himself is an exception (for the most part). He cannot stand the cold, and the all-encompassing heat is almost comforting, wiping away the memories of last winter and the blizzard that caught up to him while he was traveling in Water Country.

Which means that, as Orochimaru leans back against the trunk of the tree, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other propping up his elbow, Hatake Sakumo’s endurance and determination is all the more impressive.

The outcast is shirtless and sweating, obviously tiring but keeping the same steady and efficient pace as he runs through katas the Sannin recognizes as belonging to the Hatake Clan, adjusting them to efficiently wield the two blades in his hands. When the man first began training at dawn, he noted the absence of his trademark weapon, but although he had never seen Hatake use the swords in his hands, the other was obviously trained with them. There was an initial uncertainty that spoke of lack of practice, yet after the jounin spent the first training session reacquainting himself with them via various short katas, he now moves with them in a fluidity that would fool most people into thinking he had used them all his life. Even as the Sannin watches, Hatake pauses in his movements and restarts the long kata all over again, adding in more sweeping movements and using the katana and wakizashi in tandem with each other.

He finishes the kata, drops the blades, and returns inside, and Orochimaru brings his arm up to cradle his cheek in his hand.

 _That’s the first part of the training session done then,_ he reminds himself. _And another half-hour of physical conditioning ahead…_

He sighs.

It’s obvious that Hatake is attempting to become stronger, and it really is rather fascinating observing how he goes about doing so, but Orochimaru has been sitting in the tree for the past eight hours, so he’s allowed to find things a bit tedious, especially since the heat is making him feel a bit sleepy.

He shifts slightly and sighs again.

 _After,_ he promises himself, because he isn’t fool enough to approach Hatake when the other has weapons (that he wields very skillfully) on hand and ready. This is the man who tried to take him on after summoning backup, the man rumored to rival his own skills, and for heaven’s sake, Orochimaru isn’t seeking a _fight_ (that’s Jiraiya’s job), he’s presenting _assistance_ like a venerable Sannin is supposed to do. Probably.

So he sits in the tree and basks in the heat and waits.

Patient, like a serpent waiting to strike.

*

Orochimaru waits until Hatake Sakumo is all but under him, then drops. He attaches his feet to the branch via chakra and swings down in one smooth motion, tapping the worn-out shinobi on the neck, forehead, chest one-two-three with the harmless branch he is wielding deftly in his hand before flipping to land behind the other, smugly smirking.

“Dead, dead, and dead,” he announces, a satisfied air about him, but barely manages to leap up into a tree in time to avoid the wolf that appears literally out of nowhere, charging him from behind and snapping at his heels.

Hatake Sakumo regards him, defensively crouched in a tree with his teeth bared mockingly back at the wolf, with a rather unimpressed look, and the unashamed Sannin smooths out his expression and emits an equally impassive aura before straightening, gracefully draping himself over the branch as he levels a bland, expectant smile towards the other.

“There wasn’t any Killing Intent behind your actions,” the wolf-summoner dryly explains his lack of reaction, “and Suka was right behind me.”

The Hatake crouches down and rather fondly scratches the ears of the previously-feral wolf, and Orochimaru watches with well-concealed disbelief as the wolf sits back on its haunches and _purrs_ with eyes curved up and tail wagging. _Purrs._ A _wolf_.

_Wolves. Don’t. **Purr.**_

The wolf makes no sense.

He should’ve expected it, really, considering how it was Hatake’s summon. Summons say a lot about a shinobi, and it’s not like Hatake makes any sense either.

When the jounin looks up and gives him another deadpan look, he clears his throat and reapplies the polite and completely inauthentic smile back onto his face, leaning back and resting his hands on the branch behind him as he swings his legs idly (purposefully, because his every action is intended to draw out a desired reaction. From the blasé look on Hatake’s face, he knows it too).

“I’ve killed without Killing Intent before, you know,” he informs Hatake mildly instead. “Most of the time, in fact. And you didn’t exactly detect my presence until I attacked, did you?” 

The man says nothing in response, only tilts his head to the side, eyes calculating, as if wondering where the Sannin is going with this. He gives a brief, jerky nod, and the discontent emanating from him is so strong that Orochimaru can practically taste it. The snake-summoner’s smile turns a bit predatory. 

“You’re trying to become stronger, but right now, you’re far too weak.” Dark eyes turn stormy with rising ire ( _a reaction,_ he internally smirks). “You can only go so far on your own, you know,” he lazily comments, casually examining his nails. “By yourself, you’ll never be strong enough in time.” And when frustration fills the air ( _shut up about my faults just get to the point already_ ), Orochimaru goes in for the kill, eyes sharp and intent despite his relaxed posture, “But I can make you stronger.”

There is a moment of silence. 

Then a sigh as Hatake brings a hand up to his face and sighs, “Orochimaru, if this is another plot to get me to abandon Konoha again,” (Orochimaru bristles in indignation because, well, _yes,_ it _is,_ but Hatake could’ve had the decency not to point it out), “it’s not going to happen, let me assure you right now.”

Serpentine eyes narrow in combined defiance ( _just watch me, mutt_ ) and annoyance, but before he can say anything, Hatake continues, “That said, however, if I were, _theoretically_ , mind you, to agree to your offer, how would you make me more powerful?”

Orochimaru fixes Hatake with a searching gaze, not moving to respond as he tries to decipher the meaning behind his words.

“I’m not trying to trick you, Orochimaru. I’m just asking you, right now, to prove to me why it would be worth abandoning my village for someone like you.”

 _Someone like me, is it?_ Orochimaru’s lips tug down slightly. He is careful not to acknowledge the twinge in his heart at those words or remember that no one else had thought him worth anything either. 

(He hadn’t been worth more than gods-forsaken Ame and three sopping wet children to Jiraiya. He hadn’t been worth more than drowning grief and sorrows for Tsunade. He hasn’t been worth more than anything to anyone, really, for a very long time. About as long as he’d been an orphan actually. Then again, he hadn’t been worth more than death to his parents, either)

There’s something like resentment (hurt confusion) rising up in his chest right now, but he brushes it off easily and locks calculating golden to firm slate-gray. When he finds no deception there, only strength and honesty, he nods sharply and speaks, doing away with the casual façade and instead sitting up, hands folded in his lap, completely still and focused on the other man.

“Your senses,” is how Orochimaru chooses to begin, “are exemplary, enhanced by the Hatake Clan’s continuous contracts with the wolf summons,” he nods at the wolf sitting at Hatake’s side. “However, you rely far too much on them, trusting in them not to fool you. There are genjutsus to deal with that and other measures, as I demonstrated to you earlier. Of course, you also have chakra-sense, but like most people, you haven’t bothered to develop them any more than necessary. I would train you on tracking both in tandem with your summons and also on your own, forcing you to use only one sense each time—sight, scent, hearing, and chakra—until your skills are sufficient enough that you could track an A-rank using any single one, granted that their skillset was not escaping such things. Furthermore, I would also have you consistently scanning your surroundings and using each and every sense to ascertain the situation until you do such a thing unconsciously and at all times.”

He pauses here and gives Hatake with an even look. The air about him tastes of shock and disbelief, although his expression is all but unreadable, and Orochimaru can barely keep his lips from curling in satisfaction. He takes pride in his skills, and it irritates him that so many doubt his teaching skills when he spent years seeking knowledge and advice and refining his skills. He takes pleasure in imparting knowledge on those worthy of it, and it shows in his capabilities.

“That is but one of many ways you would be made stronger,” he decides is a good way to phrase it. “Because talented though you are, you have not sought to reach nor exceed your limits until now, and so, you are not the strongest you can be. I would seek to remedy that, should you allow me to.”

The Konoha-nin hesitates for a moment, clearly torn, and finally settles on a decisive nod.

“Yes. But on a condition,” he says, and it’s clear that he will not budge on this matter.

Orochimaru inclines his head, eyes glittering.

“I’m listening.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as said to one lovely commenter, MWAHAHAHAHA THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS FINALLY STARTING TO DEVELOP *cackles happily as I throw feelses everywhere*
> 
> The summary just kinda leapt out at me (read: ambushed and dragged me kicking and screaming into this direction). Also I literally just realized the unintentional (IT WAS UNINTENTIONAL I SWEAR ~~at least it was at first. er. mostly~~ ) innuendo in the beginning. Er. Sorry?
> 
> And omg Sakumo is just tired of everything and exasperated and kinda just wants to eat something and crash, which is why his words are so biting (I can’t believe I made him sound so mean O.o)
> 
> fyi KI (Killing Intent) for me is like 'I will keel you DIE' (i.e. you have a personal vendetta) so when Oro says 'I kill without KI most of the time' he just means that it's nothing personal. In an easier-to-understand example: KI is like punching someone because you're mad at them. Oro killing is like punching someone in a spar. Same effect, just different emotions/reasons behind it.
> 
> ALSO I JUST WANT TO SAY THANK YOU TO MY WONDERFUL AND AMAZING REVIEWERS BECAUSE YOU GUYS LITERALLY MAKE MY DAY. Reviews take the place of sleep. I'm literally so flattered and happy I start crying every time I get a comment, and they motivate me so much. So yes.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	6. the subtle art of revenge (under the pretense of training)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As many of you seemed to have guessed, Oro is indeed going to be very mean to poor Sakumo in this chapter. It’s for his own good though. Promise. ~~*crosses fingers behind back*~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 days early and longer than normal too! :) I’m ridiculously excited even if this is kinda just an interlude because Sakumo/Oro is so cute even when it’s pre-fluff at best lol.
> 
> Sakumo POV the whole time, by the way!
> 
> Please enjoy.

“Find the real me,” the Orochimaru standing in front of him instructs. “Since this is your first assignment, although both myself and my clones will be on the level of A-rank infiltrators, you may use all of your senses and resources save your summons. This is the scent we will be wearing,” he hands Sakumo a long, dark scarf strongly smelling of a perfume, “and when you’ve found the real me, I will transform back. Shiroyuki will be tracking your progress.” A small white snake pokes its head out of his sleeve, slithering down his yukata onto the ground. Almost as if an afterthought, he adds, “Oh…and do beware of henges.”

He smiles (it’s not a very nice smile) and vanishes amidst clouds of smoke.

It’s barely dawn. Sakumo has plenty of time. He relaxes, ignores the chill running down his spine, and laughs because seriously—how hard can it be?

*

Thirteen hours later, after Sakumo has been in literally every single nook and cranny of Konoha, he’s eating his words, utterly exhausted and so _done_ that he’s not even trying anymore. The grass is cool against his bare back as he lays sprawled beside an isolated training ground, the sun almost hidden behind the horizon and the sky dark.

The white snake is curled up at his side, the look on its face condescending (though how a snake could look _smug_ Sakumo would never understand) and the damnable scarf is tossed carelessly over his stomach (and how dare it still reek of that perfume. It actually smells even stronger than before, but it’s probably just overexposure and increased sensitivity. After all, after hours of searching, his nose is stinging, and he can hardly smell a thing above the disgusting scent).

To make things even worse, the perfume is currently the most popular among Konoha’s woman, and Sakumo has been awkwardly stalking almost every civilian woman in Konoha for the past half-day (in henge, of course) and has had Uchiha called on him more than once. Who knew they were so violent against perverts? Not that he’s one, of course—he was trying to identify Orochimaru’s mannerisms not _perv_ on ladies, but these kind of things take time and following (it was _not_ stalking, no matter what everyone said). 

Sakumo is tired of being called a pervert and identifying Orochimaru only for the clones to dispel. He’s found clones in the strangest places in Konoha too: camouflaged within fields, atop the Hokage Monument, and a few even hiding within hollow tree trunks by the walls. To have them dispel smirking every time he identified them…

He lets out a strangled, inarticulate yell of frustration into the night sky, throwing an arm over his eyes, and moans, “This is impossible…” Flailing his other arm at the serpent by his side, “Oi, you. Yeah, you. Shiroyuki, right? Any hints you’d like to give me before I give?”

The summons hisses (it’s laughing at him, he swears) and slithers closer, nudging his side where the scarf is dangling on the ground.

Sakumo lifts his upper body off the ground with an elbow and gives it a _look_ , “Yeah, yeah, I know, Orochimaru is wearing that stupid perfume, I get it. I’m not an idiot, no matter what you’re thinking. No need to rub it in my face that I couldn’t find him, okay?” When nothing happens, Sakumo reluctantly concedes, “I haven’t had a mission this hard in years, but it’s sundown, and I still haven’t found him. I give up.”

It stings to admit it, but he knows when to keep going and when to stop. He has to admit defeat here because Orochimaru was right—he _does_ need work on tracking—and if he’s accepted the Sannin as a teacher, it would be best for him to acknowledge Orochimaru’s superior skill early on. The missing-nin knows that, at least (Sakumo is grudgingly impressed).

There is a moment of silence (he wonders where his new teacher really is) and then—

And then, all of a sudden, a very smug-looking Orochimaru lands on his stomach with nary a wisp of smoke.

Sakumo is unashamed to admit that he screamed like a little girl.

*

“Honestly, Hatake,” Orochimaru gripes, still rubbing soothing chakra into injured eardrums, “you just _had_ to scream?”

Sakumo wheezes in response, still gaping and uncomprehending, but manages to defend himself, “O-Oi, I’d like to see _you_ react any better to suddenly getting a lapful of Sannin!”

A safe distance of 10 meters away, Orochimaru rolls his eyes, “I never thought I’d take a student so ridiculously dense as you. I was literally emitting my chakra the whole time I was in henge, never mind that the farthest I went from you was _two meters_. It’s not as if the perfume weakened with time either— I even strengthened the scent after the first few hours, and you _still_ didn’t notice. For pity’s sake, Hatake, a normal scarf, no matter how well made, would never be able to hold a scent for so long.”

Sakumo tints red in embarrassment because, well, yes, he _had_ noticed (hadn’t he just been thinking about that?) but he hadn’t connected it as relevant to his mission, only chalked it up to over-exposure. Now that he thinks about it, though, it really doesn’t make sense, and he should have noticed, but it isn’t like he specializes in tracking alone. He’s always had his pack with him at the very least and most times a team as well to catch the little things like this that he misses while he covers other areas like patterns and trails. It’s something he’s accustomed to, that symbiotic relationship—something he didn’t have the benefit of this time.

“Beyond that,” Orochimaru’s voice changes from mocking to professional in a heartbeat, and Sakumo steels himself for an in-depth and impartial analysis of how badly he failed (though if he were being truthful, the factual tone half-makes it worse), “you missed more than a fair few hints my clones gave you. At approximately 14 hours and 23 minutes, you passed a woman who wore the exact same scarf I was henged into with a very strong underscent of a serpent. My clone wore heavy makeup to draw attention to her eyes, which appeared the same as mine, and attempted to flirt with you to get your attention, but you brushed her off because you subconsciously could not connect me to someone behaving such.”

He gives Sakumo yet another unimpressed look as if conveying the endlessness of his contempt, “While it may not my specialty, I am well-trained in infiltration, including changing my mannerisms, Hatake. I told you in the beginning that this would simulate tracking an A-rank infiltrator; you should know that the ability to assume a completely different persona would be well within the skillset of a shinobi of that calibre.”

The Sannin then pauses, allowing Sakumo to absorb the influx of information. Despite the fact that all he really wants to do is take offense and defend himself, he forces himself to accept the criticism, knowing it’s the only way he’ll be able to learn from his mistakes and become stronger.

“With how many you made, I could point out your oversights until midnight tomorrow, but you will likely learn better with time and experience than my listing off your mistakes,” Orochimaru finally says after a minute, breaking Sakumo’s pensive mood, and tilts his head forward to lock eyes with him, inky strands slipping over his shoulder. His golden eyes are not sadistic or mocking as Sakumo expected, merely contemplative and thoughtful as they regard him, and his words are far closer to reassuring than he ever thought the Sannin capable of. “Fear not, Hatake; that was merely an evaluation of your skills. Had you actually succeeded in your mission, I would have been very surprised.”

Sakumo is stunned into silence when he realizes that Orochimaru is being kind to him in his own way. Needless to say, the idea of a missing-nin trying to comfort him when he’s started a war and deserves nothing less than complete and utter contempt is rather hard to wrap his mind around—but what’s worse is that Sakumo is shocked by Orochimaru’s kindness. What’s worse is that although he’s always thought himself open-minded and impartial, though he’s never wanted anything less than forming his own opinion independently of others, he’s always considered Orochimaru incapable of kindness. Not because of personal interaction but because of rumor and hearsay. Because he’s been judging him, all this time. Just like everyone else. 

It’s an unpleasant feeling, knowing that he’s been letting the opinions of others effect his own, that he’s not as unbiased or kind as he’d thought, and Sakumo wishes he’d stayed ignorant to that painful truth.

Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and Sakumo is suddenly reconsidering every interaction he’s had with Orochimaru in the past and _wondering_ and—

And then Orochimaru adds, “Not that you don’t need a lot of work. You really did miss quite a few obvious hints, and your selective situational awareness is frankly insulting. You’ll follow a new regimen and diet, of course, as you seem to be mostly brawn and no brain. Besides that, I plan to work on your deplorable chakra sense first; a newly minted genin could be better than you, Hatake. Chakra control first, which will grant you more familiarity and understanding of your chakra. We’ll start with a rudimentary exercise, a variation of the leaf-sticking you learn in the Academy. How familiar are you with the idea of bringing pure chakra along your skin and externally using—never mind, I see by the dumb look on your face that you know nothing about it at all and rearrange your facial features, won’t you? You look ridiculously dimwitted—ah, and we’ll work on infiltration later on as your previous instructors obviously did not bother very much. Hm, I wonder how you would do as a kunoichi? You’re a bit too large around the waist for that, but an extended period wearing a corset should help. And while you _do_ have very fluid movements, I’ll need to have you practice walking in heels. They’ll help in decreasing the sensitivity of your nose for when we start to sensory-training, but I suppose I’ll allow you some practice before I give you a blindfolded tracking assignment…”

What was he saying about Orochimaru being kind again? He must have hit his head somewhere. There’s no way Orochimaru could possibly be _kind_ with plans like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments and corrections (spelling/grammar) are welcome, but I would really, really like to express my appreciation once more to the amazing and wonderful people who review. It might not seem like much, but even a simple “nice” motivates me a great amount.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	7. the things Sakumo comes up with

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the middle of winter and Sakumo comes up with the amazing idea to fight a war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early!! *cheers*
> 
> Please enjoy

Sakumo is restless.

It creeps up on him slowly, this impatience, when he’s barely had enough time to sleep (let alone _think_ ), when he’s trained until he can barely keep his eyes open long enough to find his bed, and when Orochimaru is constantly giving him the most ridiculously difficult missions when he pops up every two days.

But it happens, because it’s been four months since Sakumo started a war, and _he’s not doing anything._

Instead of him, one of Konoha’s strongest front-liners, there are chuunin out there fighting and being slaughtered. Instead of him, the one at fault, there are innocents out there caught in the cross-fire and dying.

He should be out there, but. He’s. Not.

Instead, Sakumo is training to get stronger, and he _is_. Getting stronger, that is, but what’s all the power in the world worth if he won’t be allowed to use it? 

No one knows he’s been training either, or that he’s much more accomplished now (that he won’t fail them again). He hasn’t gone into the village proper once since his exile except when he’s trying to complete Orochimaru’s missions. And when doing _that_ , he’s always been in henge, so technically Hatake Sakumo hasn’t been in the village proper since his exile, _period_. Kakashi has been avoiding him for so long, too, and no one has even bothered to check up on him. He could very literally disappear, and no one would notice.

Sakumo pauses in his pacing of the garden.

He could very literally disappear…and no one would notice.

His eyes light up, and—

“Stop right there, Hatake; I can hear you thinking again. Didn’t I tell you how much that dangerously overtaxes your brain?” Orochimaru drawls from where he’s suddenly hanging upside down from a tree branch in Sakumo’s face.

Sakumo just barely holds in a yelp and a flinch and glowers at Orochimaru as if his heart didn’t just stutter to a stop.

 _Except Orochimaru,_ he amends his earlier statement with a scowl. _He would definitely notice. I should just disappear without telling him. See what he makes of that, when he can’t find me…He’d deserve it too, for all those weird assignments, the prat._

“Oi,” he protests aloud. “My mind comes up with brilliant ideas, thank you very much.”

“Your so-called brilliant ideas,” the Sannin retorts dryly, “usually lead to half the village and the Uchiha baying for your blood, so forgive me for my slight disbelief.”

Sakumo flushes because…well, it’s true, isn’t it? It’s lucky he’s good at henge—no one ever knows it’s him that way. But what the reasons for his actions aren’t what they think! He’d never infringe upon a lady’s privacy or mentally scar children or anything like that for _fun_! (Not that he does do those things, mind you, he’s just…accepted the fact that being Orochimaru’s student means he has to let go of little things like chivalry). Anyways, the only reason he makes stupid decisions is when he’s on one of Orochimaru’s stupid missions—and this isn’t an Orochimaru-sanctioned mission, which means his idea is just fine.

He doesn’t say any of that out loud, however, merely ignores the other jounin and picks up the katana in his left hand, testing its weight. Like any shinobi worth their salt, Sakumo is ambidextrous, but he usually reserves the katana for his right hand. It just… _fits_ , for lack of a better word, more in his right than his left, and it’s how his father taught him when he first began training. Right hand for the longer sword, left hand for the shorter. He’s had opponents truly ambidextrous with their swords, though, switching back and forth and equally skilled with either hand, and wonders if he could do the same.

Long fingers deftly wrap themselves around the bottom of the hilt, pulling it up and bending Sakumo’s wrist to an unnatural angle. He’s letting go before he realizes it, and Orochimaru dangles the katana by its hilt between the two of them.

“You’ve thought enough for one day, I daresay,” he deadpans. “We haven’t done blindfold training in a while—” (“ _Four days_ ,” Sakumo hisses under his breath) “—and I know you haven’t been keeping up with your chakra circulations, Hatake, I’m not blind. Just because you can’t feel it doesn’t mean it’s not happening, and your chakra hasn’t been nearly as depleted as it should this past week. There’s half a day until sunrise, so your laziness will have to wait until I’m gone.”

“Sunrise?” Sakumo yelps incredulously, before his brain catches up, and he furrows his brow. “You just came yesterday, and you never stay past sunset…you’re leaving?”

Orochimaru levels an approving half-smirk at him, “You’re learning.” There’s a faint note of pride in his voice, but he goes on before Sakumo can think too much on it, “Yes, I have some… _unfinished business_ I need to take care of away from Fire Country. I’ll be gone for the next week, possibly more, but you won’t be lax in your training while I’m gone, will you?”

He’s just daring Sakumo to argue, and Sakumo shakes his head hurriedly.

“Wonderful,” it’s definitely a smirk now. “Now time to test your skill with henge. Have you ever tried holding a henge while blindfolded? No? Well then, this is your chance.”

-

In the end, Sakumo only just barely manages to scrape by. He staggers through the gate, dropping the two books in his arms and regretting not practicing more with the high heels as he lets down his henge, tears the blindfold off, and collapses into a bruised, dusty heap. Eyes closed, he breathes heavily, not even caring that he looks highly suspicious in a long dress and five-inch wedges (very, very grateful Orochimaru allowed him that much), and just lets himself relax for a long minute. He’s not even surprised to see, when he finally opens his eyes, Orochimaru gazing at him from upside down, golden eyes glittering with mischief.

“When I told you to buy me some books at the bookstore, Hatake,” he begins, and Sakumo only barely manages to repress a groan, “I didn’t mean _these_ books.”

The Sannin has the two books Sakumo dropped on the ground pinched delicately between two fingers and drops them on his chest. Although there are no lights around them, the moon is close enough to full that even from his supine position, the color of the covers are a lurid orange at his peripheral vision.

This time, he can’t stop the groan in time. He’s tired, his feet are sore, and he’s run into more walls than he’d like to count at this point. This? This is just another thing he did wrong.

“It’s not like I meant to,” Sakumo mumbles to no one in particular, “but I just grabbed the first book I felt, okay? You try finding books when you’re blind.”

“I,” Orochimaru responds with a haughty sniff, “am well-practiced in moving without sight. You could have asked the store-keeper for help in finding the children’s section. They have plenty of small, light books that are much better reading material than… _this_.”

 _Weren’t they written by your teammate?_ Sakumo is half-tempted to point out, but he feels like it’d be a moot point. That’s probably one of the reasons _why_ Orochimaru hates them, after all. Instead, he opts for a sullen, “The bookstore had them out on the front counter.”

“Correction,” the other's voice is unbearably smug and amused, “a _paying customer_ had them out on the front counter and was about to buy them when you swept over, snatched them up, handed the cashier a record-breaking _twenty ryo_ (they were worth at least two hundred, by the way, Hatake), and ran off while tripping over yourself like an utter klutz.”

Sakumo doesn’t even care anymore.

 _I’ll…I’ll show him tomorrow. Or, or something,_ he thinks vaguely to himself. _Yeah. I’ll just leave and go off and fight, and he’ll come back for me and find nothing. And look for me everywhere like an idiot. That would serve him right. Looking like an idiot…_

He basks in happy thoughts like that, closing his eyes and making a drowsy affirmative sound to himself.

_Just wait until tomorrow…_

There is a sound like a resigned sigh, but the arms around him are careful, and the movements gentle.

“It’s not sunrise yet, you know,” a soft murmur at his ear, “but I suppose I’ll let you get away with it, just this once.” An amused huff of air as he curls closer to the heat, “Just like Anko, falling asleep outside when it’s cold. What did I do to deserve students like you?”

Sakumo drifts off to warmth and quiet whispers and strands of hair sliding across his skin like silk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. I included another mission even though I really wasn’t planning to. Ahhhhh FML. (In case you were confused, Orochimaru told Sakumo to walk blindfolded in high heels and a dress to the bookstore and fetch him books)
> 
> Also thank you so much to everyone for the pretty much insta-responses from last chapter. It's honestly mind-blowing that my writing is enough to receive _eight_ comments in less than two days! :) I always do this little weird hug-myself-and-giggle-happily routine whenever I see one review, so when I saw eight, I ended up just giggling madly to myself for a good five minutes and getting more than my fair share of odd looks...Nevertheless! They really boosted my confidence, and for that, I thank you!  <3
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	8. the execution of Sakumo's crazy plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the start of an arc in which Sakumo goes charging into war on wolf summons, nobody connects the wolf summons to Sakumo, and Orochimaru wonders what he did to deserve this. And promptly turns it into a training exercise because, well, _Orochimaru_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

There is an old lady hobbling out the gates, hair snowy white and bound tightly in a bun beneath a large, worn straw hat. She is comically tall, hunched over a walking stick barely half her height, and shuffles along slowly, obviously weighed down by the dirty rucksack over her worn and stretched yukata. Hitoku has to hide an inappropriate smile behind his hand (it really does make an amusing sight) and debates approaching her and offering help—that backpack looks heavy, and his mother always nags him for being inconsiderate. 

One look at his partner’s tight lips, however, tells him that wouldn’t be a good idea. She’s practically shooting daggers at him, and her movements are sharp and angered when she signs ‘DANGER. STAY ALERT. C-O-N-S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-E-S’ at him with discreet flicks and twitches of her fingers on the other side of the gates.

He winces—she’s alarmingly sadistic for a chuunin—and snaps to attention. Dismissing the elderly from his mind, he instead continues to scan the inflow and outflow for any suspicious people.

He can be considerate when the war’s over and his partner’s gone.

*

As soon as he is under the cover of the trees and off the road by a good hundred meters, Sakumo rips the hat off his head, drops the stick, and literally collapses into laughter.

It’s the best kind of laughter, when there’s so much joy bubbling up inside him that none of it makes it out. Sprawled on the ground, he laughs fully, helplessly, silently, high on such effortless success and _I’m actually doing something_ , until the overwhelming mirth finally dwindles down to a smug smile and a few last huffed chuckles.

He hadn’t even used chakra for this one—hadn’t _dared_ because if there’s one thing Orochimaru has taught him, it’s to minimize his chakra usage as much as possible. Chakra is too much a giveaway, but Sakumo found his way around that obstacle, hadn’t he?

His cheeks are starting to hurt from how wide he’s smiling, and the grin won’t go away, but that’s okay.

The highest barrier lies behind him. The morning sun hangs high amidst cloudless blue, a picturesque sky. The forest is gorgeous, the air is fresh, and Sakumo is about to make a difference that matters.

He smiles.

It’s a good day.

*

The day after though? Not so much.

 _And I was off to such a good start, too,_ Sakumo grouses to himself, running at a steady, even pace through the rain and hating how wet mud is somehow squelching in his toes even though he’s been on top of it the whole morning.

The rain isn’t so much cold as it is wet, but it might as well be at the speed he’s going. His clothes are cold and sticking to his skin, though he shrugged out of the yukata a few hours back, just letting it hang around his hakama pants. Neither of them weigh him down, thin and light even when wet, while he himself doesn’t need protection from the rain, so he doesn’t bother changing out of them.

The pillar of fire that shoots up just a few kilometers away is a welcome distraction, and he brightens, picking up the pace and seamlessly applying a familiar henge over himself. He’s practiced along the road when he sensed no one around and a few times before he left Konoha too, in front of the mirror as he decided upon his appearance.

(To go as Hatake Sakumo would be folly, Orochimaru has at least taught him that much, but although he’s in disguise, he’s not planning on lying to his comrades to a large extent, especially since he wouldn’t be able to keep his story straight anyways. All he plans on doing is changing his physical appearance and letting others make their own assumptions from there. It’s worked for Orochimaru, and it’s worked for him in the past too, so it’ll work for him now until he decides to take a different path)

For the briefest space of time, Sakumo is untouched by the rain, and he basks in the bliss of warm, dry hair before it is inevitably (instantly) drenched in water. Sighing, he ties back sopping, dark cerulean locks (now wet enough to border black) with a spare piece of twine, pulling the lingering ends of his hair behind his shoulders. In his henge, his strands are thin and straight, unlike his own thick mane, but they're much longer. Even bound back, they ends still reach his ribcage, but since they're pretty much the same weight as his own hair, it barely fazes him.

The rest of his body on the other hand…

Sakumo cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders, reacquainting himself to the slight differences. His shoulders are now naturally a bit lower, his wrists thinner, and the angles of his face have shifted just enough that he looks nothing like himself. Vaguely, he regrets having to change his facial features (his jaw in particular). He’ll need the extra protection, though, and he knows it, even as he ties a gray face-mask over his nose and mouth and checks his reflection in the water, pausing just a moment-- _blue-black hair, golden-brown eyes, light skin, check and check_. Combined with his plain clothes, he looks absolutely nothing like Hatake Sakumo.

A savage grin crosses his features (he hears the sounds of battle), and he sends chakra down his arms then swirling up to the surface of the skin at his wrists. Deftly, he catches the wakizashi and katana that come flying out of the activated storage seals and what do you know, maybe Orochimaru _was_ right about chakra circulatory exercises and seals coming in handy.

He puts it out of his mind for now, though, as he clears the bushes in one jump, takes in the situation in less than a heartbeat, and dives into the fray.

*

They make it halfway to the border of Fire Country before the ambush happens.

On some level, she has been expecting it. On another, however, she’s been desperately hoping it wouldn’t happen.

Uchiha Miyuko. Yukimura Jun. Ishikawa Narumi. Mizuno Tetsumaru.

She can see their names on the Memorial Stone already.

Right now, however, there is no time for contemplation. No time for regrets. These are confidential orders from the Hokage to the fort in Iwa that she is carrying on her right now, and if she and her genin team, the fastest shinobi available right now, cannot make it together, she will have to go on alone.

She is a shinobi of Konoha before a jounin-sensei, after all.

The scroll weighs heavy inside her jounin vest, against her heart, a reminder of her duty, but she steels herself for her decision.

 _I’m sorry,_ she thinks, sending a wave of shuriken at the Iwa-nin ambushing her students and readying herself to take flight. _I shouldn’t have brought you on this mission._

She specializes in speed, as she’s trained her genin team, but she’s as non-combative as a jounin can get. On the other hand, years of experience have also taught her that sacrifices must be made.

 _I’ll have to go on alone._ Everything within her rebels at the thought, but it has to be done, so she steels herself and keeps an eye out for an opportunity to escape.

The shirtless man who comes flying out of the underbrush is a godsend in that way. Even as he locks swords with two Iwa-nin at once, one on either side of him, Miyuko snatches up Narumi with one hand, Jun with the other (Tetsumaru is already under the cover of the trees, clever child) and bolts.

She leaves a trail of exploding tags behind.

The string of explosions do not make her worry for the stranger at all.

*

Sakumo wipes his swords down on the grass and seals them away, eyeing the battlefield.

Ten minutes for three Iwa jounin. Not a bad amount of time, but he probably could have been faster.

He tried avoiding all usage of chakra this time around, and while it slowed him down and restricted him to close combat, he finds he rather enjoyed it. Felt more _alive_ , felt faster and smarter and just all-around better ( _so much better_ ) than he ever has before. It made him feel so much more accomplished, and he loved it.

He thinks he will be using less chakra from now on.

It’s an exciting prospect.

*

It’s two more days before he sees any more real action. Ambushes and bandits are amusing only the first few times; small fry gets boring fast. He’s taken to summoning his wolves to keep him company, and to be honest, it’s a bit of a relief to have them out so often.

They’re some of the most capable fighters and trackers he knows, but he hasn’t summoned them out for a mission for a long time. Hasn’t needed to, because he’s a fighter in his own right, and tracking missions come rarer and rarer as he is known as a frontline fighter than the other skills he’s picked up over the years. Skills he’s let regress, he knows, that he hasn’t trained until Orochimaru shook him up a bit and reminded him how important they were.

He scratches Tsukiko’s ear idly and can feel her contented purr rumbling through the sleek form beneath him as her long legs eat up the road.

Most people have forgotten how closely bound the Hatake clan are to their summons. That’s partially his fault because he has them out only when he needs them or otherwise when he feels safe, but the fact remains that he’s so closely tied to his wolves that their emotions are all but connected.

Tsukiko’s bloodlust is amplifying his own. She thrives in battle, a fighter at the core, and it shows in her torn ear and the many white scars amidst her silver fur.

He’s near the border of Iwa now, where the fighting is thick, and the chaos of battle rings in the distance. From the way her pace changes from a casual lope to an eager bound, Tsukiko hears it too, and as they draw closer and closer, Sakumo checks his henge, unseals his swords, and makes sure he’s secure on his wolf but ready to leap off at a moment’s notice.

“Let’s do this.”

Tsukiko soars high over the crest of the last hill and goes barreling down the other side, and it’s a mixture of exhilaration and anticipation that has him beaming as they charge into battle, fangs and claws and blades striking out in perfect unison more effortless than breathing.

He’s never been more prepared in his life.

*

Orochimaru is in the middle of a tea ceremony with the head advisor of the Water Daimyo when Kasumi slithers up his spine beneath the heavy formal kimono and coils behind his right ear, hidden amidst the fall of equally raven hair. He does not pause in his conversation with the other man, but moves his right ear forward and back.

 _I’m listening,_ it means, and his summons does not disappoint.

“Rumors of a new player in the war, Orochimaru-sama,” she breathes as the advisor quietly shares how Kiri’s reputation is becoming worse and worse. “Of a man who has turned the tide and tipped the scale in Konoha’s favor. Nothing of either chakra or appearance, but they say he fights on wolves wielding swords. Possibly a samurai.”

He does not visibly react save for the stilling of his hands, but the advisor again does not notice and continues on.

Mentally, on the other hand, he’s cursing.

Sakumo.

 _Of course_ Sakumo would choose the _one_ occasion he was quite literally on the outskirts of the Elemental Nations and as far away as possible to go haring off to fight a war. _Of course he would_ (and there’s no doubt in his mind that it’s Sakumo. No one besides his idiot student would be so daring, or make ripples large enough to reach _here_ of all places).

He sips at his tea, mind whirring, and makes soft, interested noises to prompt the advisor to keep going.

If Sakumo is really as active on the field as Kasumi implies (and he is; Kasumi never shares information unless she is certain it is important), then Orochimaru will have to speed along his plans.

 _We’ll be moving onto medical jutsu sooner than expected, it seems,_ he muses and has to fight to keep a grimace off his face.

(He already has several training exercises (punishments for his student’s recklessness) in mind. So much extra work, especially when he hasn’t prepared for this…)

He presses his lips together instead and quirks it up into a mockery of a smile when the advisor watches him solemnly.

“Kiri does seem to be getting ahead of itself,” he concurs, words sweet as honey on a tongue of silver. “Perhaps you could consider reminding the Mizukage who exactly controls all its income and trade?”

It tastes like ash in his mouth, to know that he’s helping the village that abandoned him, but it’s needed.

It’s time to incite a revolution and ensure his students will be on the winning side of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a killer on the Muse because neither of us liked the word choices sometimes ._. it got rewritten so many times;;;;;; sorry if it's lower quality than usual, but I was so done with rewriting I couldn't do it anymore ;-;
> 
> I keep forgetting to mention, but I promise Kakashi is fine. He's just in his "MY FATHER IS A TRAITOR WHAT DO I DO" phase and being independent until he can sort out his thoughts. Heads-up, he's appearing in the next chapter! :)
> 
> Any theories about what's happening next? *winks* I left a few hints in this chapter, but I'd love to see what you guys are thinking! And while we're on that, to anyone and everyone who has ever left a long review on anything, authors love you guys!!! Thank you for your time!!! That said, however, I adore _any_ review, so even if it's less than two words long (dude. like. a freaking EMOTICON), I will love it, I assure you. So yes.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	9. the interlude on Sakumo (starring OCs, Kakashi, Tsunade, and Orochimaru)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because you guys keep asking about Kakashi and I keep forgetting, so I might as well.  
> Or: In which no one realizes wolf summons == Sakumo, Kakashi has issues, and Orochimaru confronts his past for his student’s future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! Hopefully the length will make it up ^_^/ In case you were wondering this chappie is nearly 3.8k, which is 2.5x longer than normal since I took so long to get this up. :)
> 
> A longer chapter, as requested by CactusJuiceLoopy, but this is probably a one-time thing (unless inspiration strikes really hard).
> 
> Please enjoy.

1\. Inuzuka Toru 

“Yo,” the interloper casually greets, back against a tree but not looking up from where he is diligently cleaning his katana.

Although his weapon is out, he isn’t projecting a hostile aura. Rather, he seems completely at ease with both Toru’s and Jyuuko’s presences, which somewhat surprises Toru (but shouldn’t, in hindsight). He and Jyuuko…they’ve always been freer, _wilder_ than the other Inuzukas, if such a thing was possible, and it shows in their scarred appearances, in their auras. Very, very few people are not intimidated at first glance, but it shouldn’t shock Toru that this man is one of those few, because while he and his partner have been compared to wolves more than once, this man has the real deal.

Beside the stranger dozes a wolf with a muzzle completely drenched in blood and surrounded by a trail of red pawprints. Crimson is liberally splattered over the rest of its snowy far; when it yawns, it reveals rows of sharp teeth tipped in scarlet before it settles back onto bloody paws.

Toru stands a good ten meters away, Jyuuko beside him and ready to flee at a moment’s notice. While they’re faster than most jounin, he’s seen this man rip shinobi to shreds before they could blink. Suffice to say, he’s not willing to chance the same happening to either him or his partner.

All the same, he doesn’t bother wasting time with subtleties or niceties (not his style), instead getting directly to the point.

He faces the stranger, still alert and on guard, and bluntly asks, “Why did you help us?”

_What do you want?_

To his credit, the long-haired man takes no offense. Nor does he visibly react, unhurriedly wiping down the blade one last time before both sword and cloth disappear. Sealed away, Toru presumes, and while he idly wonders where they went (there is no sealing scroll in sight), he doesn’t let it distract him from his self-imposed mission.

He waits expectantly, and the stranger does not disappoint.

“I help for many reasons.” At last, the head of cerulean looks up, strands shifting. Goldenrod eyes lock with Toru’s, serious like he is reassuring him of his sincerity as he continues, “And right now, I am fighting to protect something precious.”

Toru looks at the man who practically decimated Iwa’s ranks, sees how he is carding his fingers softly through matted red-white wolf-fur, and decides that this is someone he can respect.

A soft, long sigh as he relaxes, and the Inuzuka sinks down to a seat against a conveniently nearby tree. Jyuuko drapes herself over his lap so, as they do after every battle, he can clean the blood out of her fur and treat any wounds she has. The storage scroll in his vest yields a small metal bowl ten centimeters in diameter at the rim and a small tripod contraption holding up a candle close to the bottom of the bowl. He fills the bowl with a stream of water via a D-rank jutsu (which is hard enough, since Water isn’t his affinity), then sends sparks dancing off his finger onto the candle, which is much easier. Two minutes, during which he pulls a bundle of old cloths from his vest and unwraps two, then both are being swished through boiling water and wrung damp once, twice. With practiced ease, he blows out the candle flame and drops one rag on Jyuuko, tossing the other rag to the stranger, who has been watching curiously the whole time.

“It’s harder to get the blood out later,” he explains curtly, blocking out everything else so he can properly wash the crimson from his partner’s gray fur. 

Smooth strokes and circular rubs, occasionally dunking the rag into water slowly turning murky red, and Toru relaxes into the soothing motions. The rest of the world fades away, his breathing evens out, and then nothing matters anymore because he made sure Jyuuko knows her wounds need treatment from him so why is there a cut along her side she didn’t tell him about?

So what if it’s barely an inch long? So what if it’s not bleeding? So what if Jyuuko’s tongue is lolling out in amusement and so what if eyes are boring into his head?

Toru is wholly and completely focused on Jyuuko. Such inanities are beneath his notice.

*

2\. Sato Mayuri

War is impossible to imagine until she experiences it.

It is not the games they played as children, Konoha-nin versus Iwa-nin, where the Konoha-nin would always win. In the heat of battle, chaos reigns. Reflexes are everything. Instincts save lives. And each moment means the difference between death and survival. There is no escape from the confused din of fighting. Focus is tantamount to survival. She cannot possibly miss the corpses of allies and enemies alike laid upon the ground, who would look like they were sleeping peacefully were it not for the blood spilling out from their gaping wounds.

These are the sights that make up Mayuri’s nightmares. The Second War might be years behind her, but some things she never forgets. Some lessons she never lets go of, and death is one. Instincts are another.

When someone collides with her back, she has one second to register him as ‘not threat’ before there is a shout she only manages to hear because it comes right next to her ear.

“Jump!” it commands, and she doesn’t hesitate, launching herself into the air.

Eight shuriken fly from her fingers to bury themselves in the ankles of four different enemies, and they go down with surprised shouts as a blur of grey ( _wolf_ , she vaguely registers) shoots forward from beneath her just in time to chomp off the head of an Iwa-nin surfacing from the dirt. Atop the beast, a man, shirtless with blood dripping from two swords as he works in tandem with the wolf to end the lives of the four shinobi she’d put out of commission.

When she lands, it is in a dive roll that lets her rise up behind an enemy and snap her neck. Mayuri drops the kunoichi (she collapses like a marionette, strings cut and in a pile of limbs) and does not flinch when the stranger materializes in front of her and a long katana stabs over her left shoulder and slashes away from her neck.

The gurgle and warmth of arterial spray tell her he possibly just saved her life, but there is no room for manners on the field, so Mayuri says nothing, just dives between his legs and flicking a senbon with deadly accuracy into the eye of the mercenary behind his back with enough force to pierce the brain.

Dead, but enemies are everywhere, and she cannot forget that. Each time she kills one, more rise up to take their place, and there is not more time to think of others when she is fighting for her life (and for her village).

War is timeless and all-encompassing. It is inescapable until the battle ends, and even then, it is naught but a brief reprieve. It is always present, always lingering in the tension in the air, and even when Mayuri has dragged herself into the cold spray of the showers, she does not think much on the person who saved her life.

 _A wolf,_ is the most she can dredge up from the fog of her mind.

Many people have saved her today. She’s saved many others as well.

*

3\. Hatake Kakashi

“Father,” he tells Huan, “is a traitor.”

Huan does not reply.

Kakashi is not surprised. Stuffed wolves are not capable of human thought or speech, after all, so he hadn’t expected Huan to respond.

“Speaking to you is purposeless,” he says next. “So is keeping you. All you do is take up room and space. You hold no worth except sentimental value.”

Huan neither reacts nor points out that there is plenty of space in the apartment reserved for Academy students that Kakashi has been inhabiting for the past few months, which is bare of all but the essentials.

He hugs Huan to his chest.

“Father is a traitor,” he repeats, and the words sit wrong in his mouth and heavy on his heart because how can Father be a traitor?

Father loves Konoha, and the village in turn loves him. Countless times before have things been forced into Kakashi’s arms with a “Give this to your father for me, won’t you, Kakashi-kun?” (Father himself always manages to refuse gifts. Somehow) And so many times have people stopped Father in the streets to offer him gratitude and admiration because Father is a legend. And yet, Father is never arrogant. He gives warm smiles and encouraging words and helplessly laughs as he insists he doesn’t deserve such praise. Father has never been cruel or cool, but always warm and welcoming even to strangers. He is human and humble and heroic and—

…And hated, now.

Because he may be the most loyal person Kakashi has ever known, but he is also a failure and a traitor, the one who started a war and the current bane of Konoha (its former pride and joy).

And yet, he is Father, and that means so much more than just blood and bonds. It means _memories_ and _emotions_ and…and…and Huan.

The wolf is still cradled in his arms. He looks down at him, now, and remembers.

Huan is the first and last thing Kakashi has ever made with his parents, his very first sewing project, and it shows in crooked eyes and sloppy needlework. It was his mother’s birthday present to him, and they worked on Huan together, every evening after dinner with his father contentedly watching, for three weeks until all that remained was sewing the head to the body.

And then…and then Kakashi came home to a dead mother and a drained father, and instead of a birthday celebration, they held a funeral instead. He cried himself to sleep that night, and he did not touch the almost-completed wolf that day or the day after, or at all, actually, until one morning, weeks later, he woke up to a father with heavy bags under swollen eyes tucking into his arms Huan, lopsided head sewn on with several large, messy stitches.

It makes no sense, that the Father who is friends with everyone and who never accepts praise and who loves Konoha (who loves _Kakashi_ ) can be the failure and cause of a bloodbath war.

But he is. Because Father may have been loyal once, but now he is a failure. 

Because, “Father is a traitor,” and this Kakashi repeats until he’s almost certain he believes it.

*

4\. Senju Tsunade

The rumors come first, of an unknown man fighting against Iwa’s lines for Konoha. He takes down hundreds each hour, the whispers say, together with his wolf, and people begin to wonder who he is.

A samurai Iwa has offended. A man avenging his lost lover. A wolf taken human form, one of the shapeshifters of old.

They become more and more ridiculous as time passes.

She scoffs and ignores them at first. After all, what does she care if someone is foolish enough to throw their lives away for Konoha?

But the whispers persist, following her all throughout Fire Country, just as faithfully as Shizune herself, and eventually even Tsunade has to take notice.

 _Rumormongers_ , she scoffs, but she secretly wonders how he managed to tame wolves enough to _ride_ them.

It takes years for a bond to develop so far, and that level of trust is hard to come by. Wolves are wild creatures of untamable spirit, after all, and no one can ever forget that. As far as she knows, only the Hatake Clan has ever had such a touch with wolves that they could be partners.

Most people would have forgotten the Hatake Clan. They’ve been ravaged by the Warring Clans Era and the two wars that followed, and even mention of the once-legendary wolf summons they fought with in battle have long since disappeared.

But Tsunade grew up at her granduncle’s knee listening to his stories (heavens knows Hashirama would never have taught her what Tobirama did on account of “Forget that boring old clan stuff, Tsuna-chan! Don’t you want to listen to Grandpa’s awesome stories instead???”). She knows every clan invited to Konoha, who accepted and who refused. She knows of all the clans in the Warring period, be they allies or enemies or neutral towards the Senju clan.

She knows of the nomadic Hatake Clan and how they traveled with wolf companions, be they summons or actual wolves. She knows how they had but fifty members at most before they migrated to Konoha (the Senju had over two hundred at any given time, even with the constant fighting), and she knows that they survived off hunting and foraging. She knows how they rarely took actual missions and how they simply moved somewhere else when informed they were trespassing on clan territory. She knows how they did not actively seek out conflict (though, to be fair, few people would dare when there was at least one wolf to each member, oftentimes more), but she also knows how they would never back down from a fight when instigated by someone else.

(She knows how no one has ever survived a hostile encounter with them, how no one’s ever lived to tell the tale. She knows how people only started taking notice in the First War when Hatake Ryuumaru rode into battle standing on his Chiyohime, effortlessly balanced, an archer and an alpha who fired daggers and arrows alike from his bow. She knows how they connected to the wild animals in the vicinity and set them loose on enemy camps. She knows how dangerously talented they were and knows how there are only two left and knows that they should be feared but that they are untrained. She knows that the Hatake Clan is all but gone, just like her own clan, and that _burns_ )

Tsunade wonders if this new player is a Hatake, if someone messed up somewhere and ended up with a bastard child on their hands. Then she reevaluates and wonders why she cares.

 _I’m not a Hatake. It’s not my responsibility,_ she hisses to herself, and she turns back to the sake she is nursing. _**Konoha** isn’t my responsibility,_ she adds, and hates how it’s almost an afterthought.

Memories of the village ( _not my village anymore,_ she thinks savagely) that failed her haunt her every step. They are bitter hurts, but memories of her own clan ( _GrandfatherNawaki **Dan**_ ), the clan she promised to make great again, together with Nawaki to their grandmother, are wounds fresh still in comparison. Dan promised to take her name ( _Let’s seal it with a kiss,_ he whispered, and she’d smiled against his lips, cheeks wet with thankful tears), and Nawaki had been preparing his confession for the kunoichi who’d died with him on that mission, and—

And Tsunade buries her head in her hands and does her best to drink away the need to make sure she doesn’t fail another dying clan.

It reminds her too much of soft, sweet kisses, the brush of silk against her cheek, snatches of dialogue ( _I’m telling her as soon as we get back, nee-chan!_ and _Won’t you wish me luck, Tsuna?_ ), and whispered cries to unflinching stones with broken _I love you_ ’s that will never be heard.

*

5\. Orochimaru

It takes three days of hunting down spies and sweet-talking strangers before Orochimaru manages to find his wayward teammate, which is far too long to risk leaving his idiot student alone ( _now that he’s in a **war** of all places,_ a snide voice adds. He agrees completely). His lips twist in displeasure at the memory of his student’s idiocy, and he doesn’t bother trying to hide his irritation this time. There’s no one to see it after all—everyone is safe beneath the roofs of their home as _he_ stalks through icy sheets of rain, drenched to the bone and very unhappy.

But he needs to at least secure a talented medic-nin as a teacher for Sakumo, if he can’t find someone willing to play servant and follow the fool around at all hours. He’s fairly certain Sakumo won’t want the body modifications he gave himself. The almost-instantaneous healing is accelerated to the point of being unnatural, as with all other modifications. While it shows in his body, however, it has never bothered him. Why would it, when he’s been unnatural all his life?

Sakumo, on the other hand, is human. Undeniably, he is human, in a way Orochimaru would never be able to achieve, but above all else, Sakumo is at ease with it, and that is what matters. Sakumo is human, and he thrives despite it, or perhaps because of it. His student would never sacrifice something so intrinsically part of him even, or perhaps especially, to reach beyond mortal limits. Such accelerated healing would be unnatural. It would mean giving up a piece of humanity, and both Sakumo and Orochimaru are far-sighted enough to know that even the smallest sacrifice would irremeably change Sakumo forever. His humanity is a part of his being like it was never fully a part of Orochimaru’s, and he may view it as a weakness, but he would never damage his student to the point of no repair.

And that (Orochimaru scowls as he shoves sopping-wet hair out of his eyes) is why he is in the middle of gods-forsaken Ame, facing far too many memories of his team, and preparing himself for an encounter he is _not ready for_.

…

His face pulls into a grimace, _I’m turning into Jiraiya,_ but he nevertheless pauses in the street and tilts his head up, just for a moment disregarding the unpleasant coldness and focusing on nothing.

 _Breathe,_ whispers the wind, and it sounds just like his mother.

_“Breathe, kohebi,” an amused reminder, but from her voice, he knew she was secretly pleased. That wasn’t important now, though, not when he had his very own garden of twining vines and flowering buds sprawled out before him._

_“It’s mine?” a question uncertain and high, and he swallowed, blinking back awed tears, as he reminded himself he’d grow out of it eventually._

_“Yes, sweetling,” she whispered into his ear, kneeling on the ground with one hand on his shoulder. “Yours, all yours. Always.”_

The garden of poisonous plants and venomous animals was his childhood playground. He spent hours on end there, tending to the flora and harvesting the seeds and leaves and grinding them into powder. His mother gave him free reign of the garden, trusting that their clan bloodlimit would keep him safe from the most lethal poisons, and he often thanked her by leaving gifts of carefully labelled powders or liquids on her bedside table. 

A sudden emptiness fills him as he stands in the rain, frozen and alone with cold seeping through his skin and settling in his bones and organs. He rarely dwells on the past; there is little use for it, after all, except to pass time. And yet, remembering his mother’s promise brings back faint impressions of warmth and a feeling that evokes wistfulness and longing. Exactly what feeling he does not know, memories slipping from his grasp like running fingers through water, but the pressing familiarity urges him to remember. That he has forgotten is something that unsettles him-- _displeases_ him, because Orochimaru has an excellent recall and forgetting means that he has not encountered it for decades.

He looks down at his hands, brows furrowed, because something within him yearns for that feeling, and he is unfamiliar with this intense, needy desperation.

 _I’ll find it eventually,_ he promises, mildly bewildered at himself but mostly overwhelmed by the rush of emotion.

A deep breath, and he calms, facial features automatically arranging themselves back into his default expression of disinterest. One blink, two, and he resumes his stride through the streets.

At any rate, he no longer feels disgustingly dramatic. A mixture of apathy and calm is curled around his heart, an invisible defense keeping all else at bay ( _Jiraiya’s “I will stay” and Tsunade’s “Konoha needs us,” torn between his teammates as both of them walk away_ ). It is something he needs, much as he hates to admit it, to face what’s coming.

He is not afraid, per say (he has feared very, very few things before, and fears even less now), but his team has always been and will always be an exception enough to make him hesitate. He last saw Tsunade years ago, and…well, it is not a pleasant memory to recall.

(“Tsunade-hime,” cuts through their spar, and Orochimaru turns his forward lunge into a side-roll even as Tsunade collapses the earth wall in his path into a smooth, shallow slope a millisecond before he is about to collide with it.

Of course, he never thought he _would_ have, not with Tsunade there, and from the small smile playing at her lips, she knows it too. Nevertheless, she sends him a mock-glare, _What if I hadn’t been fast enough, hmm? You would have given yourself at least a concussion,_ and in return, he rolls his own and pins her with an unimpressed Look. _You’ll always be fast enough, Tsunade, but you’ll always be there to heal our wounds regardless._

Tsunade rolls her eyes, but her smile is obvious now. She turns expectantly towards the messenger, who looks a little awed but mostly terrified. Orochimaru hides a scoff in the sleeve of his yukata, rising to his full height, and watches as the chuunin hurriedly hands Tsunade a scroll, bows far deeper than necessary, and scurries off.

“Mission?” he casually queries, sharp eyes discontentedly watching as Tsunade’s smile falls into a contemplative frown.

She nods, “Sensei wants me to assemble a medical squad, but he only interrupts our days off in emergencies. I’m not sure…” 

As she trails off, the paper crinkles in her fingers. _Not sure what?_ Orochimaru wants to ask, wants to poke and prod with pointed questions until he finds answers, but he swallows the curiosity.

“Let’s continue our spar another time,” he says instead. “Sensei is probably waiting.”

Tsunade nods distractedly, eyes far away, but she manages a smile for him, small but soft with warm emotions.

“Thank you, Oro,” she lifts a hand in farewell. “I’ll see you later.”

She doesn’t, because he is sent on a mission and when he returns two days later, Tsunade is gone)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, 60% of this chapter felt forced, and I rewrote most of it at least once haha...Muse was Not Amused by some of the stuff I tried to pull, but Orochimaru's part flowed nicely from my pen. :) On the other hand, I wrote 10 different POVs for the fourth one (final decision of Tsunade), from Iwa-nin to mercenary to Minato to _Kushina_ (I was like "I'm going to regret this" in the beginning. I did). It was a godsend when the idea for Tsunade struck since she only had hearsay and it leads nicely into the next chapter, which will have Orochimaru actually meeting Tsunade.
> 
> So opinions? I love hearing your views on things and even speculation on what happens next (or what you want to happen next ;) ), and your reviews tide me through the week.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	10. the path down memory lane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. It's been two weeks since the last update, but this chapter is a record-breaking 6,145 words (well. more than that but I doubt it matters) so I think that makes up for it, no? You have the awesome blackkat to thank for inspiring me to try (she writes 5k chapters on average. this is my very first time. what even is sleep) as well as the absolutely awesome reviewers I have and love dearly. On the other hand, I didn't actually manage to edit this more than once so if you find any errors... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ sorry 'bout that.
> 
> Oh and "okyaku-sama" is how you address clients in Japanese. I couldn't figure out an English equivalent, so yeah.
> 
> Please enjoy.

Ame is a rarity in that its inhabitants are either filthy-rich or dirt-poor. It’s an anomaly that shouldn’t exist, Orochimaru muses as he picks his way past grabbing hands and wailing pleas, down the street through incessantly pouring rain. Every few seconds, the child in front of him twists to glance at him curiously, and he returns an impassive stare until she turns around.

She stops outside a set of decorated double-doors (another rarity, Orochimaru notes, especially in a country where rain never stops and workers labor through it) and peers up at him.

“The guards inside don’t let us through,” she tells him solemnly, face dwarfed by enormous eyes, “but I’ve managed to sneak through once. It’s a tunnel that leads underground, but it’s very loud after the second set of doors.”

Orochimaru gazes at her calmly and nods once, “Your payment?”

A deep breath, and though she’s trembling from either fear or cold (possibly a combination of both), when she speaks, her voice does not waver, and when she meets his startlingly unnatural eyes, she does not flinch. 

“Kill me.”

A calm blink, “Why?”

The raindrops running down her cheeks mix with tears, and the scent of fear wafts off her. She fears death. (Of course she does; everyone does; _he_ does)

“There’s nothing for me,” it comes out choked, and her hands clench, but her eyes are determined. “My life is worth nothing. Every day is an endless struggle to find enough to survive the day. No matter what you give me, it’s going to run out. I’ll use up the money eventually; I’ll finish the food too soon. I’m going to die anyways, but no matter what, I’m going to die with honor! I don’t want to become a slave or a thief or a prostitute—I don’t want to starve or be raped or die all beaten up in some alleyway! There’s only pain and suffering ahead of me! So I,” her voice cracks, “I might as well die now!”

Her breaths are coming quick, and sharp golden eyes stare into red-rimmed blue.

“You are well-spoken for a child,” his voice is level and unaffected.

“My,” she takes in a shaky breath, “my mother was a scholar before she died.”

 _There’s only pain and suffering ahead of me!_ she screamed, unknowingly mirroring the thoughts he once voiced.

 _Why don’t we just kill them and be done with it? All these kids orphaned by the war have only pain and suffering waiting for them. It’d be much more merciful to just kill them now_.

Heavens know he’d wanted nothing more those first few days, returning to a house echoing with silence (not a home, not anymore, not ever again because home is where the heart is and his heart is scattered ashes in the wind and bones beneath empty stones). Only his mother’s summons—now his—had kept him alive, prodding him in and out of bed and reminding him to eat.

 _Seia,_ he thinks now, because she had been the one to stay with him at all times, refusing to return to the summons realm even when he slept. A touch of chakra, barely any focus, and the blue-green serpent that saved his life twists into existence with nary a wisp of smoke. Of all his adult summons, Seia is the smallest, slender and naught but a single meter in length, but her coils are a familiar heaviness across his shoulders, reminiscent of sleepless nights riddled with nightmares and only the comfort of her weight to ground him.

He lifts a finger, and strokes gently up between her eyes, not taking his gaze off the girl.

“Are you certain you wish to die?” he questions silkily, neutrally.

Her pupils dilate, and she gapes at Seia, obviously trying to breathe.

“I…I…” she stammers, and he waits patiently for the minute it takes for her to pull herself together. She swallows dryly. “…It will be fast?”

“If you wish it to be,” he answers, still watching her.

At last, with obvious effort, she tears her eyes off Seia. Her eyes fix themselves on the ground, and her breathing is quick and shallow, loud enough for him to hear over the rain.

She gives a jerky nod, short locks swinging down to hide her face, and that is more than enough evidence. Seia slithers forward, and Orochimaru turns his back.

Her hair is the same snowy white as Jiraiya’s.

*

As she said, two men stand guard beyond the entrance, obviously civilian from the way they instantly tense when he opens the doors. Orochimaru strides past them without a glance and does not slow down when an attendant rushes up to him and bows deeply.

“Welcome! Please allow me to show you to a private room where you may dry off,” the teen flashes him a polite smile and turns around to lead Orochimaru down the corridor. “This service is complimentary for our clients, and upon its completion we will lead you to the main hall.”

Barely a minute later, and the boy stops abruptly, opening a door on the right and bowing.

“Please do not hesitate to use the towels inside, but beware of touching the walls. There are additional services you may request such as food and beverages; just ring the bell inside to summon a server. You will be brought to the main hall by an attendant at your discretion; thank you for choosing our services.”

Orochimaru says nothing in response to the litany of words, merely gives a cordial nod and steps inside. The door is closed softly behind him, and he takes in the tongues of flame occasionally flicking out of tiny holes along the walls and illuminating the fairly spacious room. The resulting wave of dry heat is enough to make him sigh contentedly, even as he peels wet clothes off his skin and spreads them out along the wooden table in the middle of the room. After he slips off his sandals, he skirts around the table and pads over on bare feet to the pile of fluffy white towels in the far corner. 

The two he uses are as soft as they appear, feather-light and smooth against his skin. He dries himself with the first, dropping it to the ground, and spreads the second over the wooden bench against the wall facing the door. Completely bare, he stretches himself out on his front, pillowing his head on his arm, and, lulled into a lazy sort of pleasure by the heat, only just barely thinks to summon his smaller serpents to bask in the warmth alongside him.

Shiroyuki instantly disappears into the pile of towels, Fuyuki instantly chasing her nestling but unable to follow him through the tiny spaces. As she settles for coiling on the ground, hissing grumpily, Eiji curiously slithers up the wooden bench and then up the walls, black scales glinting in the firelight.

Orochimaru drifts off to hisses of “ _Shiroyuki, if you don’t get out right now, I’m going to eat you!_ ” and deranged giggles of “ _So hot it burns, such yummy yummy fires~_ ”

*

_Ah, you’re back already? I didn’t see Nawaki; do you know where he went?_

_Nawaki…no. **No.** Oro, you wouldn’t have let him die, right? You promised, okay? You **promised** you wouldn’t let him die, Orochimaru, you wouldn’t have let him die why are you just standing there why won’t you **say SOMETHING**!!!_

_Oro…I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault; I shouldn’t have punched you. Let me heal you._

_Jeez, what am I going to do with you? Jiraiya just up and left without even telling us, and now you’re all out of chakra. Sillies._

_That you came back is enough._

_Thank you, Oro. I’ll see you later, okay?_

Barely a touch of comparatively cooler air, but his eyes snap open and lock with unerring accuracy on the figure frozen just inside the doorway.

 _Few muscles, untrained chakra, smooth skin. No shinobi training, but delicate features. Relatively exotic coloring, pale skin from being kept indoors, submissive posture. Courtesan,_ he assesses.

It takes barely a moment to register this, and he huffs irritably, closing his eyes and shifting slightly to return to a more comfortable position.

“Uninterested,” he drawls lazily as he registers the civilian’s chakra signature approaching. “Leave.”

Shiroyuki is still in his nest of towels, but the other two have already dismissed themselves. _Hiding from his mother, most likely,_ Orochimaru thinks in amusement and in a rare show of mercy does not dismiss Shiroyuki back to the summons realm.

“Okyaku-sama,” the girl’s voice is high and soft as she draws closer, “would you be interested in our other services? We have men to choose from if you are not interested in women, but if you do not choose to make use of any additional services, I will escort you to the main hall now.”

He catches the hand she tries to run down his back easily, twisting his torso a full 90 degrees without shifting his lower body, and squeezes warningly as he slowly opens his eyes to stare into a frightened gaze.

“Do _not _,” he hisses venomously, and perhaps Jiraiya would say he is overreacting, but Orochimaru has always been possessive of his personal space, “touch me ever again.”__

__Fear emanates off of her, and she nods hastily, babbling apologies, and he barely keeps from rolling his eyes as his grip tightens even more. In the silence that follows the courtesan abruptly cutting off her words, the sound of bones creaking dangerously beneath his fingers rings loud._ _

__“When you came in,” his voice is silky and dangerously calm, “no one was present. I had already left. After you searched the corridors, you saw no one unaccompanied by an attendant and presumed I had found the main hall on my own. Now, you will quietly open the door, leave, and never breathe a word of anything to anyone. Is that understood?”_ _

__“Y-Yes,” her voice shakes as she nods tremblingly._ _

__For a moment, he scrutinizes her, minor Killing Intent wafting off him, then lets go of her wrist._ _

"Wonderful,” he drawls, irritated that he cannot kill her without arousing suspicion. “Now leave me.” 

Shiroyuki slithers out of the pile of towels before the door has even swung closed, “Why didn’t you let me eat her?” 

The pout is audible through his sleepy mumbles, and Orochimaru barely keeps from rolling his eyes. 

"You wouldn’t have been able to eat her, Shiroyuki,” he sighs as he languorously pulls himself up and starts to dress. 

Never before has he enjoyed being woken up, and being forced to deal with _that_ right after his sleep being interrupted…well, suffice to say, that was more than enough to put him into a foul mood. 

__“Mother would have though,” the nestling sounds petulant, “and she would have let me try some too. You never let me eat anyone, Orochimaru-sama…”_ _

_Shiroyuki,_ he thinks, _**shut up.**_ Then he realizes he has the power to dismiss the nestling whenever he wishes (which is an admittedly belated reaction, but he’s never claimed to be at his best when woken up), and promptly does just that, saving his ears from the completion of a tirade ( _and mice taste so bland and never put up a fight, and you don’t even choose the ones that taste even vaguely okay you choose the ones that taste like dust and cloth_ ) that he really could have gone without. 

Softly, he exhales through his nose. Ever since he opened his eyes, there has been something prickling at the edges of his mind, prodding him on with a sense of urgency. In the sudden absence of noise and distractions, it pushes him. 

_Make haste,_ it commands, _you must act now._ On one hand, it irritates him because if ever he loathed something, it is being ordered around, being not in a position of power but at someone else’s mercy. 

(It has been like that ever since he was born, and his parents knew it well. _It’s our way,_ his father explained offhandedly to his offended teachers with a lopsided smile that had the sun catching on white, fanged teeth. _I’m afraid no one can take this heritage from him, especially not you._

_Don’t forget that no one has power over you, kohebi; every action you make is your own choice,_ was the way his mother put it as she smoothed down his hair with a soft, fond smile. _Letting others remain under the illusion that they hold power over you, however, is a power of its own, something you can use to manipulate them. Of course, it’s not like you would need something like this—I’m certain you have plenty of methods stored in your repertoire, isn’t that right, my clever little one?_

He’d taken the following tweak of his nose with a long-suffering, put-upon sigh, but her words he had taken to heart) 

On the other hand, however, if his instincts are correct (and they are, they always are), his window of time is closing. His chance to meet with Tsunade is slipping from his fingers, but he’s torn between seizing the opportunity to continue avoiding his past (at least until he’s ready) and doing what he knows is needed. Ambivalence and self-conflict, he realizes with a displeased twist of his lips, but this is his student’s life on the line here, and he refuses to fail the responsibilities he has taken up again. 

A hiss of self-frustration and anger escapes through gritted teeth, and he clenches and flexes his hands once, twice. Then his features relax into an apathetic sort of disinterest, and he tightens the obi around his waist, slips on his sandals, and strides out the door with quick, sure steps. 

_This isn’t what I want,_ something within him murmurs in discontent. 

_And yet I’m doing it anyways,_ he answers dryly, _because it’s what Sakumo needs._

*

In preparation for this scenario, Orochimaru has mapped out hundreds of strategies in his mind, one for each of the many ways this could go. He’s not certain how Tsunade will react—it’s something special and unique to his team, that unpredictability. Over twenty years together, and while they fight like a well-oiled, three-shinobi killing machine, seamlessly covering for each other, both making and taking openings, both Jiraiya and Tsunade are driven by sentiment and emotion, and Orochimaru has never understood that enough to follow their lines of thought. Especially Jiraiya, now that he thinks of it, because Jiraiya has the peculiar and singularly unpredictable habit of jumping from Point A to Point Z in exactly one second. It's an oddity that used to both surprise and irritate Orochimaru, having the idiot reach the answer before the genius, but merely exasperates him now. Another contribution to the strange dynamic of their team, he supposes, but he digresses. It doesn’t matter now, not when it’s unlikely they’ll ever fight back-to-back again. After all, (and something murderous flashes through his eyes in this moment, even as he opens elaborate doors and is blasted with loud music and the stench of sweat, sex, and smoke) Tsunade never plans to return to the village, Jiraiya hasn’t returned to the village for years now, and Orochimaru has already betrayed it. 

(And yet something in him still hurts deep inside, because once they were a team. Once they were the Densetsu no Sannin, the Legendary Three, renowned for their teamwork and feared across the Elemental Nations, but all they are now is broken at the seams. It haunts his every step and never fades far from his mind, this knowledge, fiercely clawing at his heart. And never does its howl cease, a hungry yearning call for those who have long since gone ahead. It burns with an icy sort of fury and screams unendingly at him to reclaim those who dared desert him, and Orochimaru… 

Orochimaru shuts the voices out with an ease that comes from years of practice and pretends he’s not just barely holding himself together) 

By the time he’s found Tsunade, he’s managed to block out most of his surroundings. True, the girl _did_ warn him, but a cavern of this size with echoes rebounding off the walls and music blasting and loud fights breaking out…it wasn’t something that could be prepared for with that amount of information. 

Unlike civilians, when surprised, shinobi instinctually relax their entire body, taut muscles going slack not in inattentiveness but rather in preparation for movement. Orochimaru is no exception; as soon as he entered the doors, he fell into that battle-ready position, ambling along unhurried but mentally cataloguing the profiles of each and every person he saw in his peripheral and direct vision. His battle mindset works like that, mind actively darting in multiple directions and processing information at lightning-speeds while he himself is disconnected, _detached_ from reality. 

Thus, when he lets that mindset fade away five minutes later along with its immunity to very real concerns like his acute senses, he blinks back into reality and trusts in his instincts as he suppresses his abilities to both scent and hear. 

Idly, he wonders how the rest of them deal with it, these civilians who have never been trained in dissociation, but figures they have most likely been in places like this so long they have already accustomed themselves to it. 

His nose wrinkles ever so slightly, and he stops beside the ‘Blackjack’ table Tsunade is at. 

His teammate is…Tsunade’s yukata is hanging off her shoulders, revealing half her unbound chest, and hitched up to her thighs. The players at the table are all male, leering indecently at her, as is the dealer, and an attendant stands by her side pouring glass after glass of sake for her. 

As he watches, he sees her lean forward to the dealer, resting her chest on the countertop, and reads her lips, “I’ll show you more after your shift if you promise I’ll win all the next rounds.” 

The dealer nods, eyes glued to her chest, and Tsunade’s own are glazed over, her face beet red. _Drunk,_ he thinks, _she’s completely inebriated,_ and he knows she can purge her system of alcohol and poisons alike in less than a minute, but she has quite clearly lost all ability to make rational decisions if she’s plummeted so close to prostitution when he _knows_ she is (always has been, always will be) loyal to her lover. 

_I won’t let this happen,_ he decides, and completely ignores the indignant shouting and protests as he snags Tsunade, rearranges her yukata, ties her obi (properly, in the back, with the fancy bow she’s always been so fond of), and shunshins out of the casino. 

__Beneath the cover of the first set of trees he sees, he pauses and gently puts Tsunade down from his arms. He wonders why she didn’t protest—one would think that she’d begin actively fighting her kidnapper (and that she’s years out of practice doesn’t matter; Tsunade’s touch is not something that can be lost), but instead…_ _

__Glazed brown eyes blink up at him as a slim arm wraps around his waist (he tries not to tense, he really does, but he’s far too experienced with Tsunade’s ‘hugs’ (read: punishments) not to)._ _

__She’s humming softly and leaning heavily on him, but one hand comes up and twirls his hair through deceptively delicate fingers._ _

__“Oro, why is your hair always so pretty?”_ _

__And he goes absolutely still._ _

__Tsunade tugs at his hair and pouts up at him, “You never tell me your secrets! It’s always ‘I don’t know, Tsunade’ or ‘I don’t do anything, Tsunade’ and blah, blah, blah, but I know you’re hiding it, Orochimaru! And one day, I’ll…uh, I’ll make you tell, or Imma punch you in the face and I won’t heal you at all and you’ll have to go to the Hospital and then you’ll be sorry!” her speech comes out remarkably coherent, considering how slurred her tone is, but the words are simplistic, which makes sense._ _

What doesn’t make sense, on the other hand, is that Tsunade remembers this discussion from when they were _genin_. Orochimaru’s clan…they’ve always had a certain tendency for androgynous features. For an aesthetic appeal, as his mother explained, due to a combination of both their genetics and the vanity of snakes. The last reason he didn’t understand until he was tested for worthiness by Manda, but really, his mother was right. Their serpents are indeed very narcissistic—and not for nothing either; his beauties are the loveliest in all the world, all splendor and deadly grace—but they are by far the vainest beings he has ever had the… _pleasure_ to encounter. They would never accept a summoner either weak or displeasing to the eye (heavens forbid a summoner be _both_ ), but their inherited abilities lend them an intrinsic beauty that proceeds unmatched by any other, be it living or dead. It is yet another of many gifts he received as their summoner, this beauty that has shifted his genetics and tipped it over the edge of human. He’s half human, partially serpent, but mostly something ‘other,’ the reason for the sort of otherworldly beauty that he shares with his serpents and that, once upon a time, his clan was known for. 

__Tsunade envied his hair every time she ran her hands through it, envied how effortlessly she could twist his hair into any number of styles and have it hold, envied how easily it matched with and hid senbon masquerading as kanzashi. She’d complained of it many times—every time, in fact, that he went over to her house at his mother’s prodding and had Tsunade teach him how to act like a kunoichi: how to dress, how to speak, how to eat, and even how to step, and heavens know how many tea ceremonies he performed or how many looks (coy, shy, challenging, angry, excited, smoldering) he practiced on strangers in the streets._ _

After they made chuunin and began running more dangerous missions, they no longer spoke of trivial things like hair (they spoke of war and blood and death instead; no ‘ _I’ll miss you_ ’s but rather ‘ _I’ll kill you if you die_ ’s). He…didn’t expect that she’d even remember, he realizes as he stares at her, completely still. 

__“Oro?” she tugs gently at his hair, a curious tone to her voice. “He~y, pay attention to me,” she whines. A moment of silence, and she scowls, “I’m going to punch you.”_ _

__That gets a reaction, and he blinks rapidly, inhaling suddenly and vaguely realizing he’d stopped breathing at some point._ _

__“…Tsuna,” he says, very carefully, and making sure his voice is completely calm with the faintest traces of exasperation, “I already told you, I don’t do anything special to my hair. I was born this way.”_ _

__“Liar,” she sticks out her tongue, and a half-forgotten instinct prompts him to grab at it. A half-amused huff slips from his lips when she yelps and retracts her tongue just in time to avoid his fingers as they nimbly dart out to chase it, “Oi, what was that for?!”_ _

__He’s forgotten how his team has always managed to drag out his childish side what with their ridiculous antics. A bitter smile flits across his face, and he flicks Tsunade’s forehead gently._ _

“I am,” he agrees placidly to her earlier accusation. “However, I’ll tell you why my hair is so pretty if you tell me the best medic-nin in the world after you.” 

Faintly, a frown crosses his teammate’s lips, “Where are you injured, idiot? I can—” 

__Orochimaru shakes his head and watches in amusement as Tsunade’s eyes instantly follow the swish of his hair like a cat would a ball of yarn (alright, so he did it on purpose. So what?), “Not me. I’m looking for someone to teach a student of mine.”_ _

__Tsunade is a medic-nin at her core. Even drunk, she still knows enough to remember that interest in healing is relatively rare; she rattles off a list of scrolls and books and supplementary but highly recommended knowledge._ _

__“Clinics are the best way to start; most villages don’t have proper doctors or nothing,” here, Orochimaru closes his eyes briefly to ward off the headache from translating Tsunade’s diction, which is decreasing in both coherency and accuracy, “and so yeah but I heard there’s a healer wandering around Ame right now. If you can track him down, I’ve heard he’s healed tons of people already without chakra. Probably a lot of resources too; that kind of healing needs a lot of knowledge but not as much experience as chakra-healing does.”_ _

__“And then there are these monks in a temple between Konoha and the Capital who have tones of herblore that is amazing, but if you’re looking for general chakra-related knowledge, I met this civilian dude who apparently lives on the border of Frost and Lightning. His life goal is apparently to collect medical knowledge, and he’s filthy-rich enough to afford it. I mean, he hired me for an S-Class mission, and all I did was tell him everything about medical-ninjutsu I knew. It was only for information purposes, though, and he vowed to not let any ill-intentioned minds get ahold of it and stuff. I didn’t tell him about my personal techniques, like no duh, but he’s collected info from hundreds of other medics, so it’s a good start for a beginner. Masashimi, I think. I forgot, but it’s something to do with sushi…”_ _

__Tsunade dissolves into incoherent rambling now, but she’s said enough for Orochimaru to want to bang his head against a wall._ _

_Wonderful,_ he thinks acerbically to himself. _Marvelous. At least a week of travel, even at top speed and assuming I don’t have any other delays. And I’m travelling through Frost Country again too. How fortunate. Positively delightful, absolutely lovely, now that I think about it. I must have the best luck in the world._

__He lets show none of those acrimonious thoughts, of course. It’s not Tsunade’s fault Sakumo is an idiot, nor is it her fault that one of the best resources for medical-ninjutsu knowledge made the moronic decision to live somewhere so inconveniently placed. At the very least, it shouldn’t take him more than two days to thoroughly search the border._ _

__“Thank you, Tsunade,” his eyes involuntarily soften as he brushes her cheek with the back of his hand. “You helped me very much.”_ _

__The smile on her face is clueless and confused but nonetheless filled with an untainted sort of joy, and his lips quirk up marginally in response._ _

__They fall back into neutrality as soon as her eyes slide shut and she goes limp in his arms, and Orochimaru hefts his teammate up a bit, carefully observing her face for any indication that she isn’t fully unconscious. When nothing happens, he very, very carefully channels the barest hints of chakra from his coils up to the surface of his skin and—_ _

_Poof._

__The downsides to summoning his larger serpents, he sighs to himself, is that their dramatics are inevitably inescapable._ _

“Orochimaru-sama,” comes floating from the cloud of pink smoke (and he really does not want to know how his summons have learned to control not only the smoke output but also its _color_ ), a saccharine sweet voice as the pink disperses to reveal the vivid green scales of a preening python. Himeko slithers around in circles around them, twenty meters of coils doing nothing to hinder her as she excitedly chatters his ear off, “Orochimaru-sama, you haven’t summoned me in so long! What do you need me for? Squishing a village? Eating some humans? I’m up for anything, really, as long as I get to eat someone. It’s been forever since you last summoned me; I’ve almost forgotten how nice and yummy humans are~ Ooooh, or do I get to meet that precious little student of yours? I promise not to break them, by the way, but it’s so unfair that you haven’t let us see it yet. That litter of Hanato’s—I can’t believe they’ve already _trained_ your new nestling when you haven’t even told the rest of us about it! Have you any idea how much they’ve bragged about it? The nerve of them!” she harrumphs. 

__“Himeko,” he placates calmly, long since accustomed to the fact that his serpents will be ever dramatic and overreacting, “Hanato’s litter is tiny. There are but five of them, and none of them compare to your size.” He strokes her scales in tandem to her ego as he continues, “Had I introduced you earlier, my student would have been rather overwhelmed by your beauty; I never would have been able to drag him away from his admiration of you, and even with you gone, having seen you once, he would want to see the brilliance of your scales again. You were not forgotten, Himeko, but rather, I planned to show you to him once he finished the most necessary parts of his training.”_ _

“Oh…well then, I _suppose_ that’s alright,” Himeko peers down at him, and Orochimaru solemnly nods even though he wants desperately to slap a hand to his face. His summons are idiots; there’s no ignoring that. “I’ll let you warn it about our beauty first. What did you call me for then, Orochimaru-sama?” 

__Her eyes glitter in intelligence, though, and he offers her a not-quite smile of approval as he shifts his teammate in his arms._ _

__“Shield us from the rain and take us to the village due southeast. Do not be seen, Himeko,” he takes in with satisfaction the understanding flick of his summon’s tongue (they never fail him, his summons), and hops easily onto the tail that comes swinging along the ground, as thick as he is tall. Unsurprisingly, Himeko does not even slow her tail’s movement and instead brings it closer to her head. Emerald scales shift before his as they rapidly approach, forming a fold of her coils that doubles back and thus provides both cover and ground to his specifications. Tsunade is set down gently, and he himself settles, back pressed against Himeko’s underside with his teammate’s limp body leaning against his side, one arm secure around her waist. “Thank you, Himeko.”_ _

__Her voice is tinged with pride, and he hears hissing laughter, “Of course, Orochimaru-sama.”_ _

__Always has he known his serpents hold a sort of breath-taking grace; Himeko reminds him of the fact once again as she twines around trunks and slides through clearings, speedy stealth unhindered by her length and size. It took him five minutes at his fastest shunshin to reach the cave from the outskirts of the village, but Himeko arrives in under two. The outermost houses, in fact, are visible from the thick oak trees they are hiding behind, even as his summons slowly brings her head closer to the ground to lessen the height of the fold in her coils._ _

__The jump is not even four meters, and he lands without even a splash in the water, tilting his head up to meet the python’s bright eyes._ _

__“Disperse yourself farther off, would you, Himeko?” he teases, and is rewarded with an annoyed hiss._ _

__“That was the most fun I’ve had in months, Orochimaru-sama,” is her huffed response, but she nudges his side fondly. “Summon us more often, won’t you? It’s like you’ve forgotten us in favor of your newest toy.”_ _

__He lifts his eyes to heaven with a sigh, “He’s no more a toy than you are, my loveliest, and you know you’re anything but.” Still, he runs a hand fondly across her scales, “It’s unpleasantly cold here. I’ll summon you every day in fairer lands, I promise. Now go, Himeko. You’re getting mud all over me.”_ _

Almost immediately, that moment of softness fades away, and Himeko’s vanity surfaces as she rears up, “Excuse me? _You_ were the one to summon me here first—you used me as a _covering_ from the rain. Have you any idea how insulting that was? It’s far from my fault that the water here is so filthy, or that the trees are so low I had to slide so much on my front, you ungrateful puny human, and ooooh I could just eat you now—” 

__She rants on, and he is content again, flicking her nose with a smirk._ _

__“Off you go,” he calls over the combined noise of her complaints and the rain, and she huffs one last time, nudging him hard enough to make him step backwards, before she goes, and if a snake could be described as flouncing, that is exactly how Himeko slithers off to the north, sulking and hissing insults inaudible over the rain._ _

He watches in amusement, and waits until he can see no trace of gleaming viridian before he turns to go. 

*

__Orochimaru stands in a room sparsely furniture but nonetheless clean and with dry, lukewarm air, a luxury in itself considering the environment. Soft snores comes from the futon he set up on the ground, Tsunade resting on the freshly-changed sheets, and he kneels down soundlessly to tuck her in with clean blankets in the same manner she teasingly did for him and Jiraiya when they were still genin grumpily camping together in the same tents, in the same rooms._ _

__When she wakes up, the curtains will be drawn, and there will be a glass of filtered water by her bedside and a full set of silken clothing still unopened in their watertight packages. A pouch will sit by her pillow, heavy with two thousand ryo, and the room will be paid for along with two servings of the breakfast, a measly three rice balls and a bowl of miso soup._ _

Orochimaru leans down, brushes dry lips against her forehead, and leaves. 

__His humor is long gone, having drained away as soon as he lost sight of his summons. When he steps into the foyer, condescension flickers over his features even as he strides up to the counter and focuses the barest bits of anger-induced Killing Intent onto the worker._ _

__“You will tell no one either of us were present,” he warns, and ever-so-slightly ups the pressure in the air, watching grimly to ensure the boy understands. Perhaps no one is following him now, but he knows for certain that Tsunade has debts to pay off, and he’s always been one to cover his tracks. At the hasty nod, he drops the KI, mouth tugging down in irritated boredom as he tosses a pouch onto the counter. Ryo spills out, and he doesn’t need to look to know there’s a greedy awe on the server’s face. “Five hundred ryo for the room, two servings of breakfast, and your silence.”_ _

__Without further comment, he strides out the door and shunshins away from the village._ _

* 

__It takes five days before something finally happens. He’s returning to his temporary base of operations from a small village, both satisfied that he’s finally found the civilian healer after days of searching and irked that it took him so long to do so. In his hand, he clutches a watertight container holding a storage scroll with every bit of knowledge the healer possessed, and he’s just about to disappear into the darkness when it happens._ _

It’s like the first time he was ever poisoned, frantically trying to breathe and unable to comprehend that he couldn’t. It’s like staring up at Manda, into eyes that mirror his own, and feeling like you’re about to die. It’s like hearing, “You will die if you are unworthy,” and saying, “I’m ready. Do it,” but not realizing that _this is what it means stop no it hurts it burns I can’t breathe help whatdoIdonow???_

__This is what it’s like, as he stands frozen in the mouth of the cave, staring into the darkness, a vice tight around his throat and his heart and vaguely wondering if he’s been poisoned again. But no, that’s impossible, he’s survived Manda’s poison, and the deadliest venom in the world runs through his veins now._ _

__His chest moves up and down as he breathes without actually taking in any air, staring unseeingly into nothing, a combination of the rain and his adrenaline drowning out all sounds but that one._ _

__It comes again, “Orochimaru?” with a faint note of concern threaded within the voice, and he abruptly realizes he’s been silent for too long._ _

__With conscious effort, he opens up his lungs and takes in a breath, the air whooshing out of him a moment later like a wind sweeping before him._ _

He takes a moment to paste a small smirk onto his face (he can’t handle anything more than just a quirk of his lips, not here, not now, not with _him_ ) and turns with his lips tilted up in the insufferably infuriating way he knows the other hates. 

__“Jiraiya. It’s been a while.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *explosion goes off*
> 
> Raise your hand if you expected both Jiraiya and Tsunade in this chapter~ OwO
> 
> If you were wondering, I've decided 2 ryo = 1 USD for convenience. It's not historically accurate, but ryo is thought to be anywhere from 100 to 800 USD and I don't think Kishimoto ever gave us conversions so yeah.
> 
> Before anyone comes at me with the pitchforks, there are reasons why Tsunade isn't going to teach Sakumo. First of all is that Oro is pretty possessive but beyond that, she's not really in any shape to do anything right now. She's still mourning, and Orochimaru wouldn't force her to do something like that, not when it's not absolutely necessary. Having realized this as well as that there is no way he's going to find a talented medic-nin he can trust, Oro's not going to be letting _anyone_ teach Sakumo (he is currently thinking a very long-suffering _why must I do everything myself_ )
> 
> Thank you guys for being understanding. Also, please check out [this](http://cywscross.tumblr.com/post/150240959240/writers) wonderful tumblr post I identify with on a spiritual level. (i.e. "I am begging you to leave me a comment because I swear it’s the only thing that’s keeping me motivated right now, I hate the work I put out and I need reassurance that people are actually enjoying this")
> 
> Rereading your reviews always brightens my day so much. To _everyone and anyone who has ever left a positive comment on a story_ , thank you. We love you <3
> 
> So shoutout to those awesome reviewers of mine. This one's for you. <3
> 
> (I slaved over this so bad though. I'm off to crash now)
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	11. the one in which things get done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to my two totally awesome enablers: kodonaprince and Aesoleucian.
> 
> Also it's long. Sorry for the delay; the last chapter wiped me out for a whole week. This chapter also uses a few Japanese references; here's what you need to know:  
> 1\. An izakaya is kinda like a Japanese pub  
> 2\. Geisha are Japanese entertainers. There's so much history I could go into right now, but they're more like hostesses than prostitutes. Geisha are expected to entertain clients without sex; via chatting, music, dancing, etc. Apprentice geisha wear white makeup over their face, the image that tends to be associated with geisha.  
> 3\. Keigo is polite/formal Japanese.  
> 4\. Dajare is Japanese wordplay. Like puns, mostly depending on how lots of Japanese words sound alike and/or the ambiguity where one word ends and another begins.  
> 5\. Shiritori is a Japanese word game where you say a noun starting with the syllable the other person’s noun ended. i.e. A: “ume” (plum) B: “megane” (glasses) A: “neko” (cat). The game goes on until someone repeats a word, says a verb/adjective/adverb/name/non-noun, or says a word ending in ‘n.’ The last reason has to do with the Japanese phonetic alphabet; no words start with the sound 'n' like you don't write 'n' 'a', you write 'na'. Rules can also be added.
> 
> Please enjoy.

He didn’t expect this. Stupid, in hindsight, but Ame counts as fairly large, and running around in the cold and wet with little to no respite hardly does wonders to his mental facilities. He hasn’t seen his teammate for years besides, not since Sarutobi-sensei gave Jiraiya permission for a long-term information-gathering mission in Ame. (It conveniently doubled as a cover for Jiraiya’s true motive—to check on his brats. Perhaps predictably, the idiot instantly jumped on the opportunity and disappeared with nary a word to anyone, including his teammates)

Orochimaru has still not forgotten. It’s hard to, after all, when far too often he finds himself wondering when his team started falling apart. He’s cast his mind back to even before they became the Legendary Three, analyzed and dissected each and every word, and yet cannot pinpoint any situation that felt off (that felt forced, that felt _distant_ , like an omen, like a death-toll, like a warning _you’ll be broken in just a few years_ ). Each and every situation he remembers, right up to his last meetings with both of them, feels the same as their first.

 _I suppose we were never all that much of a team to begin with, then,_ he thinks bitterly, and conveniently ignores the fact that he hoards every memory of his team (together, as one, as it should be) like a stolen treasure in his heart.

*

Silently, he sinks down to rest on the stone floor, watching as Jiraiya does the same on the other side of the fire they’ve managed to start up.

Jiraiya takes a gulp from his flask ( _sake,_ Orochimaru wrinkles his nose slightly as the scent wafts over to him) and heaves a long sigh, elbows on his knees and leaning forward.

“I heard rumors of a girl traveling with a serpent performing feats of magic and decided to scout things out. I suppose that’d be you then?” Jiraiya looks fairly disgruntled, and Orochimaru doesn’t even bother hiding his smirk as he shakes his head, tucking long, wet strands of hair behind his ear.

“No,” he answers, but thinks of Seia with a rush of warmth filling him.

Dark eyes narrow, “Then who?”

Orochimaru gives him a second then sends him a superior look, staying silent.

He is not disappointed. Jiraiya makes an indecipherable noise of fury and rage as he snaps, "You insufferable bastard; you're always such an asshole; I don't even know why I bother asking you things blahblahblah—”

He tunes his idiot out, dying embers of hope and possessiveness flickering to life inside him.

 _Mine,_ Orochimaru thinks, and for the first time in years, it doesn’t feel like a lie.

*

If there’s one thing Orochimaru has not missed in Jiraiya’s absence, however, it is his teammate’s pestering. In the years since they’ve last met, he’s gotten used to the dark silence, the lack of a loud voice and a bright presence. And while he doesn’t hate it…

“Oi, oi, I’m talking here, Orochi-teme!”

His eye twitches against his will, and, deliberately, slowly, he reaches up and rubs softly at his eyes and temples, hoping in vain that the coolness will shock him out of whatever nightmare this is, because his teammate’s idiocy might have been ( _might have_ , not that it actually _was,_ mind you) somewhat endearing for the first five seconds, but now it only brings back the long-forgotten urge to strangle someone, preferably the moron in question. His hands twitch at the thought of wringing Jiraiya’s neck and taking revenge for all those times Jiraiya tried to pin the blame on him (the idiot tried to blame everything on him, and he does indeed mean everything. Be it stolen scrolls or dirty clothes or misplaced items or, even worse, _perverted acts,_ Jiraiya would never let a chance to smear Orochimaru’s reputation go by. Sometimes, it worked. Most times it didn’t (thank the heavens), but Orochimaru still remembers the one time Jiraiya henged into him and walked into the women’s section of the bathhouse. He’s not sure what’s worse: that Jiraiya actually succeeded until Tsunade called him out or that he himself has now been banned from all but a few bathhouses in Konoha).

“…Orochimaru? Oi, oi, that’s a,” Jiraiya laughs nervously even as Orochimaru hears the telltale scuff of cloth against stone as Jiraiya scoots further away from him, “a weird smile you’ve got going on there. Heeeeeeey, uh, I kinda have to, uh, figure out the real person who’s doing all that stuff, you know? Spy business and all that, hahahahaha— _oh my god get away what are you doING—OROCHIMARU YOU ASSHOLE STOP LAUGHING AND HELP ME—”_

Orochimaru can’t help the undignified snort that makes its way out as Jiraiya bolts into the rain with girlish shrieks, Eiji baring his fangs and snapping at his heels.

He knew there was a reason he kept them around.

*

By unspoken agreement, they skirt around the topic of Orochimaru’s desertion. This is a meeting of teammates, not enemy shinobi (although next time is another matter entirely), which means Orochimaru can afford to let his guard down. This is Jiraiya, after all, and his teammate has always been too honest, too honorable to go back on his word like Orochimaru. 

__

So when Jiraiya drags himself out of the rain sulking and grumbling, Orochimaru doesn’t bother trying to hide his laughter at him. Graciously, he offers up one of his spare garments for his teammate, who mournfully hangs his clothes up to dry and petulantly pulls on the yukata, wrinkling his nose at the dull, dark color.

__

The Snake Sannin shrugs with a smirk playing on his lips, “You were the one who ran into the rain.”

__

Jiraiya sputters, “You set one of your snakes loose on me, you creepy bastard! Again! Don’t you dare call me a wimp; _you_ try sucking it up after going through trauma like freaking waking up to a snake about to eat me!”

__

Another careless shrug, “Testing your self-awareness. It was for your own good, really.”

__

“You made me so paranoid I couldn’t sleep for a _week_!” Jiraiya shouts, and Orochimaru smirks silently.

__

_Mission successful,_ he thinks at the furious arm-waving and unintelligible sounds of rage Jiraiya makes on the other side of the fire.

__

*

__

Eventually, they lapse into a comfortable silence, years of familiarity erasing any possible awkwardness that could ensue.

Orochimaru decides now is as good a time as any, and he leans forward to prod the fire a little bit, glancing at Jiraiya through the fall of his hair.

“Your students…I trust that they are well?” it was intended to sound like an off-hand statement, spoken in a level, uncaring voice. The end lilts up in a question, though, and he winces imperceptibly, even as he continues, “I haven’t heard of the larger countries involving Ame again.”

Jiraiya looks startled for a moment, then lets a grim smile cross his face.

“Yeah, they’re doing good. Almost got killed a few months back when they infiltrated Amegakure and faced down with Hanzo, but I trained them in escape techniques when I found out what they were planning. The civil war’s keeping the other countries from butting in—everyone’s on high alert, even the civilians. My three are part of a mercenary group that takes jobs at lower rates than the ninja on the capital, so they're earning a lot more money than Amegakure right now. Morale’s pretty low for the few Hanzo supporters left, too. I reckon a few more years, and Hanzo will be gone.”

“…You think they can kill him?” Orochimaru is careful to keep his voice civil rather than reflecting the blatant disbelief he’s feeling. After all, the three of _them_ hadn't been able to do it together, and they are legendary. For Jiraiya to think that three children can do it…well.

(He still remembers them as begging children, with sodden clothes and hollowed cheeks, with sunken and desperate eyes. He still remembers thinking, _Life is unkind,_ and that it would be kinder to kill them before they’ve lost faith in the world. He still remembers wondering who would commit suicide first, who would lose their sanity next, and who would be the last to die, left behind, all alone. He thinks they are fortunate Jiraiya went back for them. He knows they would be broken otherwise (just like them))

__

“Yes,” Jiraiya answers after a pause, completely serious. “The three of them together…they’ve grown so strong, both as individuals and as a team. If Hanzo doesn’t kick the bucket in a few years, I’m letting them try to kill him again. If it looks like they’re going to lose, I’ll intercede. We’ve worked on teamwork for the past few years; Hanzo won’t stand a chance against the four of us together. I doubt it’ll come to that though. My students…Nagato in particular…I think they have the power to kill him.”

__

Something like pride glows from the smile on his face, features softened by the fire's glow, and Orochimaru stares at him with wide, golden eyes for so long that Jiraiya breaks out of his contemplative mood and frowns at him.

__

“What? I can be smart sometimes too!”

__

Orochimaru mutely shakes his head and pulls back. What he meant as ‘ _It’s nothing,’_ Jiraiya interprets as, ‘ _In your dreams, moron,_ ’ and as his teammate starts ranting about how _‘I am **too** smart, you just don’t see it, grr you piss me off so much sometimes, blahblahblah,_ ’ Orochimaru hides his heated face behind his hair and wonders why, for just a moment, it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

__

*

__

Snow flutters softly around him, the air biting cold against his exposed cheekbones. In return, he ducks his chin a fraction closer to his chest and lets the face-mask hitch the slightest bit higher. Carefully, he circulates chakra through his coils (his face is numb, he knows he’s tinging blue), and sighs inaudibly in relief, breath warming his nose and chin, as chakra bubbles up to the surface of his skin, still suppressed enough to be inconspicuous but close enough to his skin to raise the temperature of his body.

__

Shiroyuki gives a distinctly unhappy hiss into his ear, head just barely peeking out from under the face-mask, “You’re leaving footprints behind, Orochimaru-sama.”

__

“Shiroyuki,” he breathes out, lips barely moving, “they’re not footprints; they’re chakra impressions.”

__

“I can sense them though,” the snakelet insists, and Orochimaru rolls his eyes.

“Unless you’d like to spend an extra day in the snow, there will be chakra impressions. They’ll fade away within a few hours, Shiroyuki, now hush and keep watch while I meditate.”

There is a disgruntled nip at his ear, but he has faith in his summons, and Shiroyuki is both inconspicuous and incredibly attuned to chakra signatures. Beyond that, he has… _plans_ that leave him pressed for time, especially knowing how reckless Sakumo is. There are many things he has not yet taught his student (things that can save his life), but he has business in Lightning, and who is he to deny the chance to check up on his work in Water?

__

When he and Jiraiya departed, it was on amiable terms (well. If you consider taunts and death threats amiable). Orochimaru left first, at early dawn, after summoning a few of his serpents and replacing everything he unpacked in a storage scroll he hands over to Fubuki for safekeeping. Since then, he hasn’t slept once—instead, he takes ten-minute pauses every six hours. To compensate for missing three days of sleep, he’s been meditating as he runs. Usually, he would have asked one of his larger serpents for transport, but outside of Ame, the minor countries are all but war zones, and while his summons are certainly devious, twenty meter long serpents are far from subtle. So far, loath as he is to admit it, it’s been far easier running through Frost, if only because there’s nothing to hide from (except his inner demons).

__

The meditation allows him to sort through his thoughts and emotions, replicating the mental results of sleep, whereas chakra and his physical modifications reduce the need for physical rest to borderline nothing. He never quite does stop thinking and planning, but his body moves on autopilot, Shiroyuki is on high alert, and, while more risky than preferred, it works, and that’s what he needs right now.

__

(Sometimes, when the silence becomes too loud and he has not quite yet fully withdrawn into his mind, he’s glad for Shiroyuki. Because genii never stop thinking, and while Orochimaru rarely looks into the past to wonder _what if_ , but there’s nothing stopping his mind from clinically calculating, _70% chance he’s on the frontlines. 50% chance he’s using guerilla tactics. 80% chance he’ll attack the Iwa camp head-on if his summons cooperate with him, 12.7% chance. In the last war, Iwa’s Bingo Books were reprinted on the first of every month, with reports made every week. 100% chance Sakumo has made the most recent issue with a high bounty, 80% chance above twenty thousand ryo…_ Possibilities and patterns ripple around him in the echoing silence, but the occasional flick of Shiroyuki’s tongue against his ear is enough to ground him. Enough to keep him steady)

__

*

__

He reaches the border in the late afternoon; with Shiroyuki’s warning, he can just sense the suppressed chakra signatures slowly patrolling back and forth a few kilometers ahead. _The border of Frost and Lightning,_ Tsunade told him, but on which side is the question. _Well,_ he amends, _most likely in Lightning, but if he’s as well off as Tsunade said, he’d certainly be able to afford a house with heating in Frost._ Frost seems to be a rather terrible place to dwell in; he’s passed by several empty and dilapidated wooden houses on his way by, all but collapsed in on themselves, and while the snowy mountains provide at least some measure of cover, yearlong snowfalls are hardly good conditions for agriculture. Villages would never be able to afford importing food, not without anything to sell in return, which explains the long-since-abandoned structures he's seen. Frost’s citizens would have flocked to the capital, or else left the country entirely because excluding the few winter plants scattered here and there, the constant snowfall prevents plants from growing. Without plants, there are no animals, and without either, nomadic groups would starve to death. Outside of possible travellers, there is no one to avoid, so if this “Masashimi” (Orochimaru suppresses a snort) dislikes dealing with people, living in Frost would be an intelligent decision. Close enough to Lightning to import food, but far enough (and deep enough into the snow) that he wouldn’t be bothered or found without due reason (or directions).

__

He decides to move parallel to the guards, form still hidden amidst the falling snow; it won't hurt to check this side of the border first. After all, he’ll be heading into Lightning soon enough anyways.

__

*

__

Shiroyuki can sense chakra within a range of five kilometers, a distance which will only grow as he ages. At the speed Orochimaru is travelling, five kilometers at any given point in time covers a vast amount of ground. They find him in. two hours. 

__

The man is actually named Matsushita Masashi, a middle-aged civilian with salt-and-pepper hair who, as expected, lives a few kilometers from the Lightning border. When he opens the door to Orochimaru, owlish eyes blink behind large glasses before he ushers him into the relatively large house. Most of the rooms are filled with hand-written scrolls, and because Matsushita agrees readily to allowing Orochimaru to copy down the information (by hand, to his displeasure) and gives him a meal that does not consist of ration bars, the Sannin deigns to provide some of the more harmless knowledge he’s gained from both research and experience.

__

He works by candle-flame through the night and leaves the next morning with stinging eyes and a dull throbbing at his temples. To his silent relief, Shiroyuki says nothing when Orochimaru respectfully replaces each scroll in its original position and offers a shallow bow to Matsushita before he goes. Just to ensure the patterns Shiroyuki collected yesterday haven't changed, they scout out the motions of the border patrols for a quick ten minutes from behind a snow dune one kilometre away. The ten-second gap between patrols is more than enough for him, even suffering from sleep deprivation and migraines, so by the time the next patrol comes around, Orochimaru is already swinging out of sight over the summit of a mountain, leaving no trace behind.

__

*

__

Unlike Frost’s snowy mountain ranges, past the ridges that make up a natural border, the outskirts of Lightning Country is primarily made up of plains and desert. Orochimaru travels through another night until he reaches the vast range of mountains and valleys in the central area of the country and crashes in the third cave he finds, only just remembering to dismiss Shiroyuki with a soft murmur of thanks and to summon Ryuumaru in his place to keep watch and awaken him in the morning.

__

He wakes up to fangs digging deep into his wrist and ends up exploding the cavern. To be fair, he hasn’t slept for almost a week now, and he’s never been one for the mornings. Nonetheless, it doesn’t help his mood as he irritably sucks sickly sweet poison from the bite (for lack of anything better to do) as he leaps from surface to surface in the shadows of the mountains cast by the rays of the rising sun. His black mamba dismissed himself before Orochimaru could instinctively strangle him, leaving his hands to curl furiously around empty air, but the fact that he lost his prized self-control is enough to keep anger simmering beneath his skin.

__

To make things worse, “Tch,” he clicks his tongue irritably at the heavy scent of smoke wafting off him. Like an amateur, he’s leaving signs of his presence and a path far too easy for any tracker worth their salt to follow.

__

It would be best to bathe quickly in the river and change his clothing, but…

__

Orochimaru eyes the river flashing by beneath him as he leaps between the faces of the two cliffs surrounding him.

__

It’s dawn. The water current is relatively weak, he’s wearing disposable traveling clothes, and he needs only a second of full submersion to erase his scent. The morning air is bitingly cold against his cheeks. 

__

…On second thought, he has Shiroyuki find the nearest village for him instead.

__

*

__

For places so deep in the mountains, there are a surprising number of villages near Kumogakure. Amidst sleepy grumblings, Shiroyuki directs him to a large trading town along a well-known caravan path near the base of the mountain. There are no guards, and it is easy enough to use a genjutsu to hide his scent and a henge to change his appearance to match the locals as he slips into an onsen and pays at the front desk.

__

He showers quickly but efficiently with his own unscented soap, rubbing away travel dust and lathering his hair with unscented hair products. The soap suds go foaming down the drain, and he steps out of the shower room with his hair loose and wet and a towel around his waist, inhaling comparatively cooler air as steam billows out from behind him. At this early hour, the hot springs are all but abandoned—all the better for him, really. Orochimaru sinks into steaming water with a soft sigh, feeling muscles that have been tense for days relax as he unwinds.

__

In a rather petty move, he summons Ryuumaru directly over the water and watches in smug silence as the black mamba flails in the water before swimming over, hissing moodily. Fubuki and Eiji appear on the rocks at the edges of the springs next to Shiroyuki, mimicking the nestling by curling up contentedly and watching.

__

“Dismiss yourselves if anyone comes in,” he instructs softly, running a hand across Ryuumaru’s scales as the serpent swims by on his way to the rocks where the others are napping. “Shiroyuki, you may hide behind me if needed. Wake me up if anyone comes too close.”

__

With that, he closes his eyes and returns to meditating.

__

This is the last time for a while he’ll be able to rest like this, and he knows it.

__

*

__

She tosses heavy ringlets spun of gold behind her shoulders, head held high as if to display the green ribbons clasping the top half of her hair behind her head. Light eyes heavy-lidded coyly glance at him, her hips swaying as she sashays in his direction, and Akihiko swallows dryly, eyes fixed to the soft, pink lips blowing into a flute, long fingers elegantly dancing over holes. Her skin is colored the porcelain white typical of geisha, and Akihiko rises almost unconsciously.

__

By the time her song has ended, she stands before him, lowering the flute and smiling sultrily beneath her lashes. 

__

“Is my lord pleased by the performance?” she breathes out, the sweet keigo and submissive posture failing to soften the edge of delight in her voice, and Akihiko smiles.

__

“What is your name, girl?” he asks, meaningfully eying Horio; his personal servant immediately hands over a pouch heavy with ryo.

__

“Kaneho, my lord,” the girl bows elegantly and raises the flute to her lips once more. “Might I entertain you with some more?”

__

“Golden leaf, hm? Play to your heart’s content then, so long as you follow closely.”

__

Lightning Country’s villages are filled with girls like this one, who dress up as geisha and frequent village establishments in search of money or sponsors. Kaneho is one of the first he has seen who mimics a geisha accurately; he would have been fooled if they met anywhere outside this izakaya. They pass by numerous other flirting girls on their way out, and Kaneho bows gracefully to the manager at the door and slips him a handful of money.

__

The only reason these girls get in, after all, is because the owners charge them for it.

__

Akihiko waits patiently, then leads her to the higher-class inn he is staying at. While it’s certainly not up to the standards of his home, villages like these can’t possibly hope to compare to the splendor of the Lightning capital, so he makes no fuss and merely accepts it.

__

Across the low table, Kaneho sinks down into a perfect seiza and pours them both tea from the teaset that is already waiting for them when they arrive (Akihiko mentally thanks his father for providing such a capable servant who won’t embarrass him). Over the next hour, Akihiko slips the girl ryo as she proves to be quite intelligent. They engage a variety of different topics, debate in detail over politics, and even test each other’s intellect with a few games.

__

It is mostly because of Kaneho’s subtle _dajare_ ; as time passes, she uses more and more wordplay until Akihiko cannot keep himself from laughing, delighted.

__

“Ah, but are you one of the most intelligent flowers I have ever come across! Let us test each other in _shiritori_ then, and see then who shall win.”

__

Her laugh is soft and high, “Will my lord grant a prize if I win?”

__

“Anything you wish, Kaneho, as long as it is within my power. My father may be the Daimyo’s best advisor, but even he cannot grant you everything.”

__

“A small boon, then, and one my lord may ask of me also if he wins. Shall we begin?”

__

She wins, much to his surprise. Her memory is excellent, and she catches him when he fumbles out a word he’s already used before. As he said, he promises to grant her request to the fullest of his capabilities.

__

“It would honor me if my lord would allow me to accompany him to Kumogakure. Long have I desired to see its renowned glory, but the road is perilous for commoners such as I,” she bows her head.

__

“Ah, that is but an easy thing to grant,” Akihiko chuckles and nods, taking a sip of tea from his cup. He sets it down gently and watches as Kaneho instantly refills it, lightly steaming tea pouring out in a perfect arc, “This tea set, in fact, is from the village. The shinobi of our country are very skilled, are they not? Even those who can no longer fight still have talents to benefit the village; the woman who made this couldn’t see at all and yet turned out such fine craftsmanship. She wrought it so as to keep anything poured in at the exact same temperature until poured out. Incredible people, our shinobi are. I don’t blame you for wanting to see their village.”

__

Kaneho brings up a long sleeve up to cover her mouth as she ducks her head, but her eyes are curved happily.

__

“Thank you, my lord.”

__

He reaches out across the small table and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, trailing a possessive hand down her neck.

__

“Will tonight be preparation enough for you, my dear? We planned to leave tomorrow at dawn, as it is two days’ journey, but you need not fret. We will be escorted by honorable shinobi, and I will, of course, send you back with escorts as well, if you choose not to accompany me further along my journey.”

__

The girl clasps his hand to her cheek then presses it to her lips, eyes demurely focused on the table.

__

“It will be more than enough…Akihiko.” Her eyes slide open to reveal slit pupils and irises of molten gold. They are the last things he sees as his world starts blurring at the edges. “Thank you. You’ve been most useful to me.”

__

He remembers nothing more than that.

__

*

__

When he enters the carriage tucked securely against the young noble’s side, plenty of snickers and wiggling eyebrows are exchanged (discreetly, of course) among the servants.

__

Orochimaru ignores them; he has better things to do than that—such as as monitoring the genjutsu on the man who obliviously chatters on.

__

He didn’t kill the noble, of course—there are so many better uses he can think of. Yamasaki Akihiko, the sole son and heir of Yamasaki Takehiko, the most trusted adviser of the Lightning Daimyo. As the son of the one who holds the ear of the most influential person in Lightning Country, Akihiko has definitely inherited at least a share of his father's influence and status, considering the deeply respectful bows the Kumo-nin guards gave him. How lucky, Orochimaru muses smugly, that he managed to snap up Akihiko before anyone else. He's been trying to insert spies into the upper echelon of Lightning Country for years, and he hasn't even needed to try for this one.

__

While he still has the chance, Orochimaru unseals a small kit from a storage seal and touches up on his disguise. Without his prompting, Akihiko immediately holds the mirror up for him, and Orochimaru offers him a smile that is only half-fake. The genjutsu he's cast doesn't so much control as compel--it's a subtle thing, one of his own creation, that whispers impressions and feeling. Its true power, however, lies in convincing one the thoughts are their own. While it is wholly possible to cast a genjutsu in which the victim believes each action is done of their own will, that requires much more power, and most shinobi would realize their out-of-character actions almost instantly. He's tested this genjutsu on several shinobi, and it hasn't failed even once. Tsunade hadn't even noticed why she wanted to launch her shoes at Jiraiya even when he hadn't done anything (yet), sensitive as she was to genjutsu, nor had she noticed when he released it. His genjutsu slides in and out with the subtlety of his smaller serpents, and he maintains them with just as little effort and chakra.

__

Its only downside is that it would never be able to make someone go against their most fundamental principles, but rarely does he need as drastic an action as that.

__

The carriage rolls to a halt five times through the day, once every three hours. They stop for lunch and dinner, well-seasoned and filling meals that seem overextravagant in Orochimaru's eyes (he thinks of wild animals, of pursuers; only his confidence in his own skills keep him from bolting at the delicious aroma sure to attract attention. The most dangerous things are those that seem best, and he knows it well. The shiftiness of the two guards tells him they feel it too), but Akihiko eats unhurried, calls it traveler's fare, and promises to treat him to a real feast once they reach the village. As is expected of his character, Orochimaru gives a soft laugh and hides his mouth behind the silken handheld fan gifted to him, even as irritated disbelief radiates off the outwardly-stoic guards.

__

*

__

As soon as they arrive in Kumo, Orochimaru slips off to gather information under the pretense of admiring the sights while Akihiko conducts his own business. Several of his younger serpents, discreet and small but unable to properly defend themselves, are sent out. This is a learning experience for them also, but he makes sure to send them out in groups of two, with his swiftest serpents shadowing. He himself flirts his way into a bar for shinobi and through dozes of men and women alike, subtly fishing for information. In this, the genjutsu is an immense help, loosening tongues enough that they start to share trivial information which he slowly directs to what he is seeking.

__

It is a trial for him as well, to touch so much, to invite others to touch him. It goes against everything he has ever wanted, but he suppresses the shudders of disgust and instead brushes dry lips chastely over skin and runs teasing fingers up and down arms.

__

Iwa, he learns, has set a high bounty on Sakumo's head. Kumo is less heavily invested in the war, but has still sent several platoons of chuunin out to fight along with a few jounin. Most of the shinobi in this village are genin with a few chuunin on rest and the remaining quarter jounin, and Kumo is profiting from the war, which is why shinobi are fighting, but none are the best. With Suna having mostly withdrawn from the war, Kumo is the only thing keeping Konoha from conquering Iwa with the addition of "The Lone Wolf."

__

The strongest shinobi in this village have been running missions nonstop, Airi reports when Orochimaru has finally managed to drag himself out of the shower hours later, tongue flickering against the red marks on the Sannin's skin where he's scrubbed himself raw. The jinchuuriki in particular looks about to drop dead. "Good riddance," according to the villagers.

__

"Will you be alright, Orochimaru-sama?" Airi's eyes are soft and confused as she nudges her nose against the sluggishly-bleeding gash on the underside of his jaw, where someone pressed a kiss. 

__

Carelessly, he wipes away the blood, but lets her wind herself around his neck and shoulders.

__

Against the mixed yellow and white of her scales, he murmurs softly, "Well done on your first debriefing, Airi. Rest now."

__

A soft touch to her head, and he dismisses her before she can realize he hasn't answered her question yet. Almost instantly, Nami slithers up his leg onto his lap from where she has been patiently curled up at his feet to make her own report. Tactfully, she does not comment on the blood beneath his nails, but merely speaks calmly, often pausing and waiting until he absently strokes her scales to continue.

__

Earlier, he assigned her to sweep the village together with Shiroyuki, confident that Shiroyuki would be able to sense the volatile chakra of the Hachibi jinchuuriki that has been setting his teeth on edge since he first entered the village.

__

"I bit him twice," she sulks. "And it did not affect him, even after thrice the amount of time the venom should have taken."

__

"Jinchuuriki are formidable beings indeed," Orochimaru hums, and tucks a strand of still-golden hair behind his ear. "That confirms my theory. Thank you, Nami. I'll deal with him personally."

__

"He plans to leave tomorrow," she warns, coiling into herself. "The two-leg beside him very loudly disagreed, especially after noticing me."

__

His lips tilt up into his first genuine smile of the day, soft and barely present.

__

"I think I'll be fine, Nami. Dismissed."

__

*

__

Another sleepless night, but it's worth it. Airi's information-gathering skills do not disappoint, and in the morning, he sits at a desk, secure in the confidence of his chakraless disguise. The dark hair of his wig is coarse but effective, and the lenses of his faux-glasses are tinted.

__

Humminh, he scribbles a few lines down on a clipboard before turning to face 'his' patient. The Hachibi jinchuuriki looks up expectantly, dual-colored hair shifting. "Here you go," Orochimaru smiles as he pulls from the pocket of his doctor's coat a cylindrical container of spherical white pills and drops it into the other's lap.

__

Blue B examines them with furrowed brows, "They're not the usual ones."

__

"They're new," he casually responds, shifting his attention back to the clipboard. "They'll help you sleep better."

__

"I see," the shinobi stands. "Thank you," and leaves without further adieu.

__

Orochimaru smirks.

__

*

__

Later, after the Hachibi has levelled most of Kumo, he slices off the tip of its horn.

__

Who knows? Maybe Sakumo would like a souvenir.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The semi-gay JiraOro scene is dedicated to Aesoleucian, who is an awesome enabler even when writing comments and asked “When he sees Jiraiya that thing he does is a gay thing, right?” in a comment on the last chapter. And then I just had to write it because 'ooooh Sakumo has competition and needs to step up his game.'
> 
> The chapter length (exactly 5555 words MWAHAHAHA) is something that spiralled out of my control once I started writing, but you can thank kodonaprince for that, because my first fanart and it's _gorgeous_ and flail-inducing aaslfkjlkajsfdadf.
> 
> Courtesy of Taiko, Sakumo's new moniker is "The Lone Wolf."
> 
> Also canonically speaking in the anime, Orochimaru does infiltrate Kumo, replace Blue B's doctor, and set the Hachibi loose on its final rampage in Kumo. So mwahahaha chaos. OwO
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	12. the village of the mist and the battlefield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orochimaru has not properly slept in three weeks. So please don’t mind him as he sics his vainest serpents on Kirigakure because _he is tired and more pissed off than he has ever been in his life so excuse him if he works off some of his exhausted anger before he meets up with his idiotic student and ends up killing him accidentally-on-purpose_
> 
> (Or: In which Orochimaru is pissed and Sakumo is having the time of his life)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

He contemplates it, you know. Actually bothering to infiltrate Kirigakure and assassinate the Mizukage. He has the routes laid out in his mind, contingency plan upon contingency plan, endless excuses and disguises and backstories and characters prepared. Kasumi has scouted the village for him, his serpents can reverse-summon him at any moment, and all that is on him right now is easily disposable.

Then Kasumi finishes her report—the Water Daimyo is dead, Water Country is in lockdown, Kirigakure has full control—and he remembers that the only time he’s slept in the last three weeks was in a cold, dark cave for two hours, even when he had a perfectly warm and cushioned bed available to him (because of course, he couldn’t let his guard down; that way only led to ruin), and he remembers that _this is all Sakumo’s fault._

Somehow, he’d forgotten that. His fingers flex as he imagines wrapping them around the idiot’s throat and _squeezing_ and perhaps tossing him into the women’s bath just to see what happens, and—

“Orochimaru-sama?”

Kasumi’s docile voice pulls him up short, and he wipes the wide, insane grin off his face and coughs into his clenched fist. He’s not embarrassed. No, really, he’s not. The only reason his cheeks are red is because the sea breeze is bitingly cold.

“Ah. I’ll take care of it. Thank you for your hard work, Kasumi.”

Her tongue flicks out and fondly wraps around his fingers before she disappears with only the faintest wisps of quickly-dispersed smoke.

Left in peace to his own thoughts, he lets himself ponder what to do with the Village Hidden in the Mist. Infiltrating Kirigakure seems too kind. After all, if it hadn't refused to simply roll over and obediently withdraw from the war, then he wouldn’t need to be here, cloth sticking wet to his skin, freezing cold despite the chakra he’s continuously circulating through his body, and ready to destroy something (preferably Sakumo).

A huff, blissful heat tinging his cheeks (fine. He’s embarrassed Kasumi saw him like that when he’s normally so controlled. Shut up. At least his face isn’t freezing off), and—

A cloud of pink blooms twenty meters onto the ocean, and a wall of water flies up in a perfect circular cylinder around its center.

He smiles.

“South, to Kirigakure. You may do anything you wish.”

*

“Hey, mister, am I pretty?”

At the irritatingly sweet tone, Kosuke scowls on auto-pilot. He turns, ready to bark out a “Shut up before I kill you, brat!” and ends up blanching when he comes face to face with a reptilian eye as wide as he is tall.

A large tongue flickers out and wraps around him in a mockery of an embrace, “Mm, you smell super yummy…” The Kiri-nin swallows dryly and doesn’t move. A glimmer of annoyance, “Oya, oya, you’re supposed to compliment me back, human.” A pause, “Hurry up before I eat you.”

“Th…ank…you…” he forces out, pupils blown wide in terror.

Expectantly, “And?”

“A-And you’re absolutely gorgeous; I think you’re the most beautiful serpent I have ever seen; as a matter of fact, your beauty outshines the stars themselves,” words trip their way out of his mouth as he blabbers, unable to stop, until darkness sweeps over him and he knows no more.

Saito sniffs haughtily, “Why, excuse _you_! Ugh, can you believe the human, Orochimaru-sama?! He called me _pretty_! I mean, like, _ru-ude_!”

Orochimaru lounges on Saito’s head, stretched on his front, and vaguely murmurs an affirmation into the pillow of his arms. Distantly, he can hear Himeko tauntingly calling out, “Ha! I’ve already been kissed by _five_ ladies, you slowpoke Saito!”

“Shut up!” Saito yells back. Muscles ripple beneath Orochimaru, wind blows rapidly, before abruptly halting, “Ah, I’ll be moving faster now, okay, Orochimaru-sama?”

The Snake Sannin hums in approval.

*

He wakes up from the first nap he has taken in weeks to find himself freefalling. There is a moment of disorientation, flashes of irritation, but instinct takes over before anything happens. He flashes back to Jiraiya pushing him off tree branches, Tsunade dropping him out windows, and lands on the ground with all his chakra driving down.

The ground cracks from the full force of his anger and irritation, dust exploding out of the air. He opens his mouth to say something—he’s not sure what—and he’s feeling odd. He can’t explain it, but he feels somewhat like he’s been torn from both his worst nightmare and his best dream, or maybe he’s feeling nothing at all. The conflicting emotions fluctuate and clash; something is about to happen, and—

Saito’s familiar chakra coils around him.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” his summons mutters sulkily. “I dispelled before I could stop myself. Ugh, and what’s with all the dust, Orochimaru-sama? I just cleaned my scales yesterday…”

Orochimaru breathes in the scent of blood and dust and mist ( _not Konoha. Not that time. Not **them.**_ ) and nods as if the lack of sleep and the frustrated concern for Sakumo isn’t destroying what’s left of his psyche.

Effortlessly, he leaps onto Saito’s head, landing lightly, and settles again.

“After you’re done playing around,” he murmurs, “make sure to eat the Mizukage for me.”

If he doesn’t get out all his anger now, he’s not quite certain how Sakumo will survive his vengeance. Probably by laughing, the moron.

He falls asleep with something softening in his heart.

*

Sakumo whoops.

_Loudly._

There is something exhilarating to be found in battle—something glorious and humbling and otherworldly to be found in the trust he has in himself and his wolves. A single slip-up, just a moment’s distraction could decide his fate. He lives in the present and makes snap decisions, not thinking, just doing, even though one wrong choice could destroy him. The knowledge sends adrenaline pumping through his blood, and he laughs fully, freely, as he tumbles off Tsukiko and stabs a man in the face before backflipping and then launching himself from the crushed nose of another. Suka howls delightedly as she pounces on his leavings, and Tsukiko leaps to catch him on her back.

As per his teacher’s orders—and hadn’t that been a surprise, waking up to a serpent predatorily staring into his eyes atop his chest. He came close to accidentally killing himself when it dodged his instinctive stab, but even closer to actually killing himself when he realized Orochimaru’s message—he uses no chakra whatsoever, not even to augment his muscles. It leaves him feeling vulnerable, even if he has ready access at any point in time, and every action is that much more taxing, but also that much more empowering.

On an unspoken cue, Tsukiko veers left towards the murderous-looking group of thirty enemies fast approaching while he tilts right, rolling smoothly on the ground and coming up in a kneeling position with his hand firmly gripping the disembodied hand groping along the dirt. A heave he throws his full weight and momentum into as he rises, not stopping, and a dark ball of cloth is flung into the air, dirt spraying his back. Sakumo tucks a few strands of cerulean behind his ear and unsheathes his shorter sword in the same movement, twirling it as he stabs behind him without even needing to look at the hostile chakra he senses creeping up on him, spinning on his heel in the dust cloud and smashing his foot into the face of another enemy.

Then Suka howls—not in victory this time, but in a cry for help. His smile loses its playful edge as his heart seizes in his chest, and in the next instant, he is vaulting over heads, sprinting over shoulders, leaping onto Tsukiko as his gray wolf blurs past, barely managing to clasp his arms around her neck as she barrels forward.

When they get there, Suka is favoring her right side, gray fur stained with blood, and holding her own against a never-ending force of enemies. There is a kunoichi with a Konoha headband leaning heavily against her, either unconscious or close to it—young, not even a teenager from her height, with one leg obviously broken. Muscles bunch up and ripple beneath Sakumo, and Tsukiko tears through a good dozen shinobi on her way to her fellow summons. Sakumo gets rid of a good ten more with the pouch of shuriken he filched from some poor sod he passed by while fighting, and in the dust cloud that erupts from Tsukiko skidding across the ground as she lands beside Suka, he pushes off her back in a smooth jump, slashing and stabbing without discrimination. 

Only instinct (born from weeks of waking to kunai at his neck, of walking and suddenly collapsing because of the shuriken embedded in his leg, of training and suddenly having a senbon land exactly between his eyes, of ‘ _that would have killed you, Sakumo. Fail!_ ’ and ‘ _you need to be more alert, Sakumo. Fail!_ ’ and ‘ _Be less predictable and more aware, Sakumo. Fail!_ ’) lets him catch the tri-pronged kunai that comes flying from the dust millimeters in front of his neck, and he stares at it for one long second in bewilderment before—

“Oh my—bloody—what in the world is your _problem_ —we’re on the same side!” he dodges rapidly, only managing to categorize _Konoha, yellow and blue_ amidst the dust and fists and weapons.

He doesn’t attack—not because he doesn’t want to, but rather because he _can’t._ The other person is attacking almost faster than his eyes can track, seemingly always bare centimeters away from Sakumo no matter how much he’s dodging or blocking.

Words don’t seem to be getting through either.

Sakumo grins fiercely.

He’s good with danger, though. That’s alright.

Tsukiko’s chakra is flaring protectively as she circles Suka and the girl. In close-range, there won’t be enough room for the other person to cast any jutsu, but nor is there enough room for Sakumo to efficiently use his katana. So he sweeps the katana forward and sheathes it with a lazy twirl in the moment’s reprieve the attack brings him, and advances forward with his wakizashi in one hand and the tri-pronged kunai in the other.

A taijutsu fight. Perfect time to test his skills.

Sakumo smiles like the sun.

*

Unfortunately, the fight doesn’t last long.

They fight fully and mercilessly, with the intent to kill. There is an unspoken mutual respect that forbids the condescension that comes with pulling any punches or not taking advantage of an opening, and Sakumo is on the brink of starting to _soar_ when Suka barks (yes. She barks too. Isn’t that fascinating? It terrified him out of his wits the first few times she did it, but now it’s just a fact of life that his wolves are _weird_ ) and someone curses.

“Oi, Namikaze! Cut it out already! Didn’t you hear the orders to leave him alone? Why don’t you try attacking the bastards with Iwa headbands, huh?!”

Sakumo doesn’t attack when his opponent stops. A shinobi wearing a Konoha headband, golden hair framing sky blue eyes, regards him for a few moments, wary but not hostile, then nods to him respectfully before disappearing

Sakumo blinks, but doesn’t have much time to contemplate it before the enemies who had been giving his opponent and himself a wide berth suddenly come pouring in to fill up the empty space, and Sakumo is fighting again against a relentless wave of enemies, and at some point he finds himself back to back with the blonde, covering for each other’s weaknesses, and the girl on Suka, together with his summons, are holding their own.

 _Hey,_ he grins. _This is actually kind of fun. Definitely one of my better ideas._

Somewhere in Kirigakure, Orochimaru scowls in his sleep.

“Sakumo,” slips silently through his lips on an exhale.

(“ _I’ll kill you_ ” comes on its heels)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Sakumo is an adrenaline junkie. idek anymore okay? I just headcanon him like that.
> 
> It's filler-ish, I know, but necessary :) I chose to end it here so I can focus all the action and awesome stuff in the next chapter (lol I'm excited haha can you tell?)
> 
> hmmm who could this girl Suka saved be??? i woNDER
> 
> updates are dependent, as always, on the ~~Boss-Lady~~ Muse. :)
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	13. the reencounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

Sakumo jolts awake and falls off the tree branch just in time to avoid the storm of senbon that go flying over his head. Midair, he twists and lands softly on his feet, instantly letting gravity take over and rolling to the side to soften the impact.

 _Tsukiko!_ he flicks his gaze back and forth through the darkness. If his summons hadn’t warned him of the danger, either something happened to her or—

His teacher materializes beneath the light of the half-moon.

“Orochimaru,” Sakumo drops his hand from the katana strapped to his waist. At the murderous glint in golden eyes, he laughs somewhat nervously, “Ha…haha you’re looking well—meep!”

“What,” the Sannin hisses, fingers clamped like a vice around Sakumo’s shoulders, “were you _thinking_ , you fool? Have you any idea how many plans I had to move up just because you had the most _moronic_ idea I have ever heard in my entire _life_ and went _gallivanting_ off to war without telling anyone!”

Sakumo laughs again, a bright smile on his face, letting the dark-haired man rant and nodding occasionally like he’s actually listening. When Orochimaru finally pauses to take a breath, Sakumo takes the chance to interject, voice light and half-teasing, "Sorry about that. Were you worried?”

And it wasn’t meant to be serious, but…

Golden eyes hold slate for a few moments, then Orochimaru scoffs quietly. His grip around Sakumo’s biceps loosen as he steps back, lifting his chin and turning away.

“You are my student,” the Sannin says, but that’s an evasive answer if he ever heard one.

Sakumo can feel a grin threatening even as he presses, “So _were_ you?”

In the four months he’s spent training with Orochimaru, Sakumo has realized that the other is painfully (almost pitifully, if it weren’t so hilarious to see him flounder) inept at expressing his emotions. It reminds him quite distinctly of Kakashi, if he’s honest with himself, and over time, he’s accepted that social awkwardness comes with the whole ‘genius’ package. It’s more endearing than anything now, after all, especially when he considers how they try to express their love and affection back to him.

While Kakashi, after four years of physical affection, is comfortable with giving hugs and even the occasional kiss every once in a while, Orochimaru tends to awkwardly express his concern through scathing remarks.

_“Are you quite certain you’ll be able to finish your laps tomorrow?”_

_“I sincerely doubt you’ll make it the lat stretch. You may as well just give up now.”_

_“You’ll collapse very soon, Hatake, and let me assure you—my snakes will not appreciate being squished.”_

_“Why don’t you practice balancing on the ground first before you move on to your mutts? At least then the most you’ll injure will be yourself."_

Sakumo smiles beatifically at Orochimaru at the memories. The Sannin might sound incredibly prickly to other people, but he knows those words are filled with love.

Orochimaru glances back with an unimpressed tilt to his mouth, “You’re thinking something monumentally stupid yet again, I see.”

“Eh? No, I’m not!” Sakumo denies, raising his arms in front of him in an ‘X.’

“Hm,” the Sannin hums doubtfully but lets it pass. “I thought to take you further from the battlefield to debrief you on what I’ve done in the past few weeks.”

Sakumo nods, “Up the trees then?”

As one, they turn to look at the tree Sakumo was previously camping in. Like many of its neighbors, it reaches far, far into the sky, and Orochimaru eyes it contemplatively for a minute.

A hum, “Alright.”

*

Orochimaru perches precariously on a thin branch that looks ready to break, eying Sakumo amusedly when the latter settles hesitantly on a far sturdier branch below him.

“I didn’t receive information on your whereabouts until about a week after you entered the war—which, by the way, I most definitely did not appreciate, especially given the lack of warning,” Orochimaru scowls down at him. “Do you know how many favors I had to pull to get Kirigakure out of the war? You pushed several of my plans ahead of schedule when they weren’t ready, brat.”

“Brat?” Sakumo splutters indignantly. “I’m _older_ than you!”

Orochimaru smirks at him tauntingly, leaning forward until his fall of raven hair is ticking Sakumo’s nose, “Yet no less immature, it seems.” As Sakumo splutters, at a loss for words, he continues, “As I was saying before you interrupted me to offer your juvenile opinion,” the smirk is even wider; Sakumo _swears_ Orochimaru is doing this on purpose, “I pulled a few strings in order to send Water Country into a civil war. Apparently, however, the Mizukage assassinated the Water Daimyo almost immediately and now holds full control over Water Country. My summons are taking care of that matter for now, but Kirigakure has already withdrawn their forces in order to enforce the cooperation of the other residents in Water. While that happened, I also took the liberty of finding some information on medical ninjutsu.”

Sakumo catches the storage scroll tossed down, eying it curiously, “Medical ninjutsu?”

Orochimaru nods sharply, “The Academy doesn’t delve beyond basic first aid because medical ninjutsu requires a precision and skill very few of its students have. Your chakra control was adequate before, but taking into account the chakra exercises I’ve had you do, in addition to not using your chakra during fighting, your chakra control should have greatly increased. You’ll be studying these scrolls at night and practicing on animals until I deem you ready to advance to summons.”

“Summons?” Sakumo scowls. “Oi, I’m not going to hurt my summons! They won’t be able to fight then!”

Orochimaru rolls his eyes, “You inherited more than just two wolves, Hatake. I’m sure you could find one to spare from the fighting.”

“What happened to calling me Sakumo?” he mutters beneath his breath but huffs out, “Fine. Only if you fight with me though.”

Orochimaru gives him a _look._

“Tell me, Hatake,” he says in a tone that Sakumo knows to mean ‘ _Try your best to convince me, you idiotic mutt that I love with all my heart_ ,’ “why I should fight for the village that abandoned me? Or even why you should fight for the village that abandoned _you_?”

Sakumo laughs easily but stares at Orochimaru with sharp eyes, “Did you forget? Kakashi is a part of that village, _sensei_ ,” he purposefully emphasizes the last word, wearing a smile like a knife to the heart, “and you promised to protect him, didn’t you?”

For a minute, there is only the sound of leaves rustling in the wind as Sakumo holds the Sannin’s gaze challengingly, refusing to back down.

Then, in a slow, deliberate movement, Orochimaru slides golden eyes shut.

(Sakumo grins fiercely in triumph. He’s won this round, even if Orochimaru didn’t verbally acknowledge it. Knowing how much Orochimaru values his pride, that isn’t surprising, but it’s no less satisfying a victory for him)

“Anyways,” he allows graciously, “you can wear a henge."

Orochimaru sends him a venomous glare and snaps out, “I intended to.”

 _Sore loser,_ he thinks gleefully in the privacy of his own mind, and he doesn’t smirk.

No, really. He doesn’t, as much as he wants to (he does value his limbs, thank you very much).

(Okay, so maybe he snorts a little even though his lips are pressed together and he's shaking with repressed laughter, but _that's not **really** a smirk so there_ )

There is a carefully controlled inhale above him before Orochimaru leaps down, landing lightly on the branch beside Sakumo.

“We will end the war within the next year,” the Sannin states, and it’s not a question, but Sakumo nods anyways.

“Attack the Iwa camp?” he suggests, perhaps a little too eagerly, because Orochimaru eyes him dubiously for a few moments before he answers with a sharp nod.

“Attack the Iwa camp,” he agrees, “but not directly.’

“What?”

*

“I repeat, _what?_ ” Sakumo looks at the scroll in front of him, any available space filled with cramped characters written with sharp, jagged strokes.

Absently, he wonders who wrote it. Their handwriting is practically screaming of pent-up stress and frustration. He thinks they could use a good lay.

Orochimaru sighs disappointedly beside him, not taking his eyes off of the Iwa camp a kilometer away from the veritable forest of sky-high bamboo stalks they’re hiding in.

“Channel chakra into your eyes. Slowly, as it said in the scroll.”

“And what’s the point in that?” Sakumo dubiously skims the list of practice techniques.

“It’s used to hone chakra control, but it’s also used frequently for information gathering, _as it said in the scroll, Hatake._ ”

 _Then why does Jiraiya always use binoculars?_ Sakumo ponders quietly before another thought strikes him.

“I could end up exploding my eyes and permanently blind myself for the rest of my life, you know,” he points out.

There is another carefully controlled breath that tells him Orochimaru is quickly losing his patience of questions.

Sakumo hides a smirk, _I suppose getting rid of me for close to a month also lowered his tolerance for me,_ as Orochimaru snaps back, “I’ll stop you before you get to that point; now stop complaining or I’ll blind you myself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sakumo mutters.

“Hatake!”

*

“Ah!”

Sakumo’s eyes fly open as they suddenly warm, and he claps a hand over one eye as they start throbbing. His other eye is blurred with what he first thought of as tears, but then his eyes catch on a bird wheeling through the sky hundreds of meters away.

Dangling by only one wrist, having loosened his legs’ grips around the bamboo stalk in his surprise, he stares in shock. He can see the avian in stark, clear detail—each individual breast feather, the movement of each wing as it circles in the air.

“Don’t look at me,” a calm voice breaks through his thoughts, and Sakumo almost turns to look before remembering what he just heard. “Good," Orochimaru says approvingly. "Now angle your eyes slightly downward; what is beneath the bird?”

“Um," for a moment, he flounders, caught off guard. "Trees; a forest of trees.”

“Colors?”

“Uh, for the trees? Brown and yellow, and a little bit of green for the leaves on the branches that haven't fallen off.”

“Animals?”

“Lots of birds,” Sakumo blinks and absent-mindedly pulls himself upwards from one wrist, wrapping his other arm and his legs around the bamboo stalk again. “Those look kind of like monkeys? And a few squirrels too, plus some smaller animals like…I think those could be snakes, and—”

“Enough. What is in front of the forest?”

“A camp. Iwa-nin marching out, some guards, and—hey!” Sakumo yelps as cool fingers are suddenly wrapped around his head in a loose but unyielding grip, pressing down on his temples with bruising force.

Almost instantly, they withdraw, and Sakumo traces his fingers around the sore spots gingerly.

“What was that for?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. He can see Orochimaru clearly now. “I was just about to actually start gathering information.”

Orochimaru shakes his head, long hair swishing, before he turns back towards the Iwa camp.

“You were starting to channel too much chakra into your eyes,” he explains easily. “So I’ve temporarily blocked your tenketsu with my own chakra.”

Now that it’s been mentioned to him, he can feel a foreign presence buzzing at his senses, closer than he usually allows anyone other than Kakashi. It’s distinctly cool against his senses, and he can feel a sharp edge lurking beneath the surface, but there’s no hostile intent to it, and after four months together, both he and Orochimaru have become fairly familiar with each other’s chakra.

It’s still there, lingering in the back of his mind, but…it’s not unbearable, just uncomfortable.

“It’s dawn,” Orochimaru extends an arm in Sakumo’s direction, and Sakumo eyes it awkwardly.

He’s just about to grab Orochimaru’s wrist when a black blur shoots past him, and he startles so badly he almost falls off the tree. A small black snake winds up its summoner’s arms, and Sakumo realizes he hadn’t even sensed its chakra, even though summon animals have higher chakra than normal animals.

Orochimaru smirks at him amusedly and leaps lightly from bamboo stalk to bamboo stalk down until he reaches the ground.

Sakumo sighs and follows him downwards.

 _What a jerk,_ he thinks privately.

He's not really surprised to find out that he doesn't really mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Sakumo basically indirectly implies that Orochimaru needs to get laid. :)
> 
> If you were wondering, the chakra control exercise was basically doing what dojutsu users do--channeling chakra into the eyes to augment sight (except bloodline users have eye hacks. Lucky butts)
> 
> Quick question: how do you feel about Danzo? I'm wavering between making him a neutral who welcomes Orochimaru's return to the village, an antihero who opposes Orochimaru's return to the village for the good of Konoha, and a villain who opposes Orochimaru's return to the village because he doesn't want his own crimes to be revealed. Thoughts? I'll ask this on the next chapter too, fyi, but reasons would be appreciated since I can see Danzo as all three.
> 
> He won't be appearing for a while yet, so you guys have time to leave me thoughts haha. When I actually write him into the story I'll strikeout this :))
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	14. the day after the reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orochimaru has strange ways of showing love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

“No biting,” Orochimaru reminds the three small snakes twining around his legs.

Fubuki and Eiji agree reluctantly, but Shiroyuki is clearly sulking as he slithers into the hollow of the tree where Sakumo lies, knocked out by a sleeping genjutsu and hidden by the tree’s roots and several layers of genjutsu.

“Why not?” the nestling petulantly nudges Sakumo’s cheek with his head. “It’s not like he’d die…”

“No hurting Orochimaru-sama’s humans, Shiroyuki,” Fubuki chides before refocusing her attention on her summoner, who strokes her scales gently. “Don’t worry, Orochimaru-sama. I won’t let him eat your human.”

With that, she pulls away, slithering over to where her nestling is hissing taunts at Sakumo.

Orochimaru considers pointing out the fact that he doesn’t have a claim to Sakumo outside the most informal teaching experience he’s ever had, or perhaps that Sakumo is his own person and belongs to his son far more than his teacher.

He says nothing in the end, merely checks to make sure the sleeping genjutsu on Sakumo will hold until he gets back and that the genjutsu concealing his serpents are secure. 

He steps away to face the wolf that has been restlessly pacing ten meters away. Instantly, the animal halts, staring unblinkingly back at him, as he mockingly bares his teeth.

“Ah, yes, the wolf that purrs. Suka, was it?” Eyes glittering sadistically, he ambles forward until he is leaning over it, injecting as much venom into his voice as possible. “You haven’t been taking very good care of your master, have you, mutt?”

The wolf snarls and rears up onto its hind legs, and Orochimaru instantly shunshins back, leaving massive jaws to clamp shut over empty air.

“Touchy, touchy,” he shakes his head at it, a cold smile fixed to his face. “Attacking your master’s teacher like that? How presumptuous of you.”

Killing Intent bears down upon the animal—heavy, malicious, dark. It whimpers and docilely tips over onto its side, exposing its stomach, and Orochimaru coaxes his Killing Intent back beneath the surface. The threatening smile drops to be replaced with disinterest, and Orochimaru sighs, somewhat disgruntled by the easy victory.

“Come,” he turns and lets a henge fall like a curtain around him.

He doesn’t have to look back to know that the wolf is reluctantly following.

*

Unlike Sakumo, Orochimaru does not particularly enjoy fighting.

He suspects a large part of Sakumo’s eagerness to fight is the reassurance that he’s actually helping to end the war more swiftly in Konoha’s favor, but…things are different for him. He’s a missing-nin, after all. Konoha has betrayed him far more times than he is willing to tolerate (first his parents. Then Jiraiya, and Tsunade, and Sensei, and Anko—and is there anything or anyone he is even remotely fond of that Konoha has not hurt? Unwillingly, his mind flashes to Sakumo, and then, _no,_ because Konoha has taken everything from Orochimaru, even her own people).

And yet, Sakumo hadn't lied, earlier. Orochimaru grimaces even as he absentmindedly sends a kunai flying from his sleeves into the eye of a kunoichi wearing an Iwa hitai-ate. He did make a promise to protect Sakumo's child, and by default, the village, when Sakumo first accepted the offer to become Orochimaru's student.

_”Yes. But on a condition,” Sakumo says after a long pause, and Orochimaru inclines his head, eyes glittering._

_“I’m listening,” he smiles._

_It’s not a nice smile—it’s cold, dark, bitter, but also arrogant because he’s won already, and he knows it. Sakumo ignores it and fixes him with a hard, unwavering gaze._

_“Kakashi.”_

_There is a tense sort of silence before Orochimaru realizes more information will not be forthcoming._

_“Your son,” the Sannin responds, a slight curiosity filling him. When Sakumo does not do anything more than offer a curt nod, Orochimaru continues, “An Academy student. I hear he is to graduate within the year.” More silence. “And once he graduates, he will become a genin. If he’s as prodigious as he appears to be, he’ll be a chuunin within a year or two, and given wartime conditions, he’ll be fighting on the frontlines as soon as that happens.” He waits. Sakumo watches him silently, lips tight on his face. “Unless there is an exception made for him, but I doubt that would happen. Konoha needs all the fighters it can get, isn’t that right?” Orochimaru smiles humorlessly. “What would you have me do then? Ensure that exception for him? Delay his field promotion?” His eyes sharpen. “Or perhaps you would have me kill him before he knows the cruelty of the world and loses faith in his village.”_

_There is a sword unsheathed in his face before he can react, and the wolf growls threateningly._

_“I would have you protect him,” Sakumo hisses out vehemently, face alight with a dark sort of fury. “I would have you watch over him and have his best interests in mind until the ending of either your life or his. I would have you protect him with everything you could possibly imagine, and I would have you do all those things in accordance to either his or my wishes and not according to your own twisted ideals. That would mean that you would not poison him against Konoha, nor that you would permit anyone to attempt to harm him unless you are absolutely and completely certain that they would be doing so only for the sake of training that would not tax my son too much. I would have you protect my son every moment of the day, whether by proxy of your own summons or with your physical presence. I would have you protect Kakashi no matter what, so will you still take me as your apprentice?”_

_Orochimaru holds his gaze calmly, unafraid of the sword at his throat._

_“Yes,” he answers simply, somewhat caught off guard at the strength of the other’s emotion._

_(There is a jealousy stirring within him. One born of wounded pride and a dead father and a suicidal mother and last goodbyes with broken eyes and lies of “See you later.” No one has ever loved him more than death (or anything else, for that matter), and for that, he’s furious (broken))_

*

“Hey, you!” a very, _very_ familiar voice rings out, and Orochimaru only ducks the kunai already flying at him from years of hardened battle instincts.

Purple hair flutters in his peripheral vision as a back meets his.

“Thanks for saving me a while back! I would’ve been totally screwed if your wolf hadn’t been there!”

He says nothing in response, partially because he’s splitting his attention between maintaining his henge and using subtle ninjutsu to trip enemies so Suka can take care of them but primarily because he can’t bring himself to say anything—not to _her_ , not right now (because secretly, he’s been trying to replace her with Sakumo all along, trying to erase those memories and fill up the empty space by torturing Sakumo, but in all actuality, it never worked (it never does) and all he accomplishes is carving a new piece out of his heart that he loses to someone else).

“Sorry about Namikaze, by the way; he can be an idiot sometimes. The name’s Mitarashi Anko! You better remember it, ‘cause once this war is over, I’ll be the one to drag you into Konoha and make you join our forces! I’ll fast-talk the Hokage if I have to! Healthy bloodlust like yours is always welcome; and so is eye-candy for that matter! Lucky for you that you’re both, ne?” Orochimaru’s former student bursts into raucous laughter, and the Sannin barely resists face-palming.

( _Fast-talking the Hokage? Healthy bloodlust? **Eye-candy?**_

…Perhaps it hadn't been the best idea for him to encourage Anko to spend more time with other kunoichi after Tsunade left. At the time, it was because her crass language and brash attitude were irritating him almost as much as Jiraiya did...but then again, if he'd wanted her to stop such things, he probably shouldn’t have introduced her to Tsunade in the first place either)

“Iwa has a hefty bounty on your head, by the way, Mister ‘Lone Wolf!’ You have an actual name or will you still be ‘Ippiki Ookami’ when you join Konoha’s forces?”

Orochimaru closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and turns in one swift movement, sleeves sweeping out as his hands whipping through hand-seals.

Anko lets out a yell of surprise as she’s suddenly lifted off the ground, wind cradling her by the armpits and conveying her gently but swiftly across the battlefield, gusts of air deflecting all projectiles thrown. Orochimaru drops her a good few kilometers away, not bothering to lower her closer to the ground than a few meters, and flexes his fingers, taking a moment to catch his breath within the walls of earth he’d raised and infused with his own chakra to prevent the Iwa-nin from controlling it. He may be far from weak, but surrounding his student (former student, his _former_ student, why can he not seem to remember that?) with strong winds while keeping the winds from ripping her to shreds—that technique is not one he uses very often, mostly because it requires a finesse and concentration that taxes him both mentally and chakra-wise.

And, of course, because he’s fighting right now, and it’s never best when he’s distracted while in a fight to the death.

Slightly irritated, he rotates his wrist and lowers the walls of earth with barely a thought, flipping up over them and whistling sharply, lacing his voice with authoritative chakra.

He sees the wolf below him instantly turn, jaws opening and dropping the man she’d been shaking around like a dog toy, and he lands on it lightly, taking care to control his descent (Sakumo would be most displeased if he accidentally killed his summons). Although he only donned Kusanagi to keep up Sakumo’s appearance as a swordsman, he draws the chokuto, lacing his fingers through fur and attaching himself to the wolf via a thin film of chakra. 

He glances across the battlefield when he faintly hears, through the din of screams and metal, Anko’s voice in a roar that must be ear-shattering if he can still hear it from so far away. His lips tilt up ever so slightly, in something akin to fond exasperation.

 _More trouble than they’re worth, I swear. Always making me do the most foolish of things…_

He shakes his head, absent-mindedly stabbing a kunoichi barreling towards him wielding metal claws that are gleaming with an unnatural tint on their edges.

How troublesome. He has such bad luck with students.

*

“What did you _do_?” is the first thing Sakumo says to him when Orochimaru returns to the clearing, freshly bathed and wearing a clean yukata.

The Sannin raises an eyebrow at him, gracefully draping himself across the ground (it’s not flopping. He doesn’t do _flop._ )

“Just now?” he drawls out lazily, pillowing his head on his folded arms and angling his face to the right so he can breathe. “I bathed, washed my yukata, forced your wolf to bathe, and washed some of the armor I requisitioned for the both of us since you didn’t seem to have brought any sort of protection with you whatsoever.”

“I have Suka,” Sakumo says, stupidly in Orochimaru’s opinion, and there’s a very strong urge to roll his eyes.

“For your body, Hatake. Such as armor or perhaps a vest. _Anything_ except thin cloth,” he clarifies, suddenly too exhausted to argue much more.

He still has a month of sleep to catch up on, not to mention his chakra levels are at an all-time low from being used so much with very few chances to recover.

“They would have recognized me as a Konoha-nin if I wore the Konoha vests, though,” Sakumo points out.

Orochimaru sighs (Sakumo seems to bring that reaction out of him very often) and shifts his head slightly, feeling his hair, damp and cool, sliding across his skin at the movement, “Better that than you die. This is the primary battlefront of the war, anyways, and there are many Konoha-nin here. Even if you wore the vest, no one would have given you a second glance, save if they wanted to seek you out afterwards, but you would have a second protection with you.”

“…I hadn’t thought of that,” Sakumo allows. His voice is calm, none of the repressed irritation Orochimaru is used to hearing from people he corrects. It’s…somewhat of a pleasant surprise, given the pride and arrogance he’s faced for the last month especially (but also in years upon years past). “What I was asking, however, is why the moon is still up but I feel distinctly as though I’ve been under a genjutsu.”

Orochimaru waits expectantly, but his student doesn’t seem to be inclined to continue.

“If you can’t figure it out yourself,” he lets one eye slide open to see Sakumo sitting in front of him, legs crossed and an intent expression on his face, “you don’t deserve to know. Read the scroll edged with green out loud and memorize the information. And dismiss your summons; although she’s refused to speak with me all day, she fractured her left hindleg. I may have healed it, but there will still be a lingering soreness, so use a different summons tomorrow. My summons will keep watch. Don’t let them bite you. I won’t heal you for your own idiocy.”

Seven serpents of various weights land on him, and he relaxes even as Airi slithers up to him and Hanato starts hissing violently at her five nestlings.

“O…Oh. Them again,” Sakumo faintly whimpers.

“No biting this time, Hanato. No chasing either,” he reminds both the python and her nestlings. To Airi, he hides a yawn and murmurs, “Hanato and Nami will take four of the nestlings to patrol. You stay and keep watch over Sakumo.”

“Yes, Orochimaru-sama,” she nudges him gently on the cheek and slithers off, instantly taking command with slightly louder hisses.

The tenseness to his frame slips away.

Sakumo is grumbling under his breath but obediently reading the scroll aloud in a clear but soft voice. Airi is curled up on his back, long coils a warm, reassuring weight evenly distributed across his body ( _like a blanket,_ Orochimaru finds himself thinking bemusedly). The nestlings are practicing stealth, and Nami and Hanato are perfectly silent in the night.

(And Anko is alive, and Konoha is winning the war, which may or may not be a good thing but which Orochimaru grudgingly accepts because Sakumo is very correct in his arguments)

It’s, all in all, enough for him to relax into the temporary peace and finally ( _finally_ ) slip off for some much-needed rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has been very uncompromising lately??? On the other hand, I finally have some time to catch up on _my_ sleep, so I'm in a very good mood. 
> 
> Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate it! :)
> 
> Also blame Aesoleucian for the snake blanket thing. I couldn't resist.
> 
> In case you missed it, I'm currently deciding whether to star Danzo as a neutral, antihero, or villain. This is your input into the story and will be edited out once I actually reach that point in writing, so please feel free to tell me your thoughts if you haven't already :)
> 
> And to everyone who already has, thank you all for the amazing responses last chapter! :) It's always an honor to receive reviews and also very helpful to know what you're liking/disliking or what you'd like to see more of.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	15. the lesson beneath the moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Studies are painful, both for Sakumo and for me.
> 
> Please enjoy.

“…yarrow, which functions as an antiseptic and can reduce fever and inflammation, especially when combined with…” Sakumo gradually slows down his reading until he stops speaking altogether, glancing up with a question on his lips and already anticipating a senbon to the head.

He shuts his mouth abruptly, however, at the sight of his companion stretched out on his stomach on the ground, head pillowed on his arms, eyes closed, and breathing so softly Sakumo has to strain to hear, even from only a meter away.

His eyes are immediately drawn to the golden and white patterned snake coiled on its summoner’s back, watching him impassively with unblinking eyes.

“Aren’t you a pretty one?” he smiles, keeping his voice low and soothing so as to not disturb the other man's sleep. “What’s your name, beauty?”

There is a moment of silence and then a hiss in response, but it’s neither hostile nor threatening, so Sakumo only winks playfully, “I’m afraid I haven’t learned to speak your tongue yet. I’ll have to ask your summoner later, when he’s available to translate.” The snake hisses again, unblinking eyes vaguely disconcerting (but only in the slightest sense of the word. Sakumo’s used to disconcerting, after all. It’s been hard to let down his guard ever since he stepped foot onto the battlefield of another war). “Are you trying to tell me to keep reading? I’ll start now then, haha. Wouldn’t want to disappoint Orochimaru too badly now, after all.”

He turns back to the scroll, sighing as the cramped words start swimming, and bends over crossed legs, propping his chin up on the heel of his palm and tracing the words with the index finger of the other hand.

“Let’s see here…ah, yes. Yarrow can reduce fever and inflammation, especially when combined with other anti-inflammatory herbs. Lavender is especially useful in this respect and can be identified by its distinctive…”

*

Sakumo yawns as he finally finishes reading the scroll on medicinal herbs.

“That wasn’t related to medical _ninjutsu_ at all,” he laments, feeling somewhat betrayed. “Next scroll, I guess. Oh, hey, it’s on the chakra circulatory system. I haven’t seen this map thing since the Academy, I think. Ugh, memorizing information again? How dull…” The snake is making something that sounds suspiciously like laughter, and he automatically sighs, collapsing backwards. “I feel absolutely pathetic. Even the snakes are laughing at me…I doubt this day can get any worse.”

“I don’t,” comes an amused, light voice, and Sakumo jerks his head to the side just in time to avoid a senbon that would have pierced his eye.

“Oi, oi,” he complains, sitting up and absently batting another senbon away from his face as he continues, “what if I actually fell asleep? I’d lose an eye, be no help in the fight, and Konoha might lose the war.”

“Good riddance if it did,” he hears Orochimaru mutter under his breath, but just as he opens his mouth to protest, the Sannin cuts him off with a dismissive wave, “If you’d lost an eye, it’d be of no trouble to replace it, even if it were not salvageable. I’m sure we could find some soul who’d be…willing to give up an eye for his life.”

There is dark, vicious amusement entwined within Orochimaru’s words, and Sakumo rolls his eyes.

“One day, we’re going to talk about your problems,” he rakes a hand through his hair. “That being said, I’d really appreciate not needing to implant someone else’s eye into my body. My depth perception would be all off, and by the time I’ve retrained myself to a satisfying degree, the war would probably be over already. Besides, it’d be setting a bad example for Kakashi.” He frowns down at the scroll in his lap and amends, “A worse example, I mean. I’m fairly certain he’d be ashamed to have not only a disappointment but also a cripple as a father.”

Silence, and Sakumo looks up when there’s no witty comeback, somewhat concerned. The look in the other's golden eyes is indescribably complex and at odds with the casual disinterest or amusement those eyes usually house.

“Orochimaru?” he eventually ventures after a long minute of drawn-out silence.

Orochimaru blinks, and the look is gone.

(Sakumo wonders what it was. It looked startlingly like fury mixed in with frustration, but the aura being radiated was all possessive protection. Strange, and he wonders what would have made Orochimaru so angry when there’s no one else around for a kilometer except them)

“Describe the leaves, flowers, and stems of a yarrow plant,” the Sannin orders in lieu of explaining anything at all, and Sakumo grumbles mentally, but nonetheless obediently starts listing the facts he can remember.

“Not good enough” is the phrase he hears most often as he gets quizzed on literally every single detail in the thousands of characters he’s read for the past hour beneath the moonlight, but every once in a while, there’s a “Sufficient, but not the best,” thrown in there.

“Well done” is the other phrase in his teacher’s limited vocabulary of responses, but Sakumo only hears that once in a blue moon. It never fails to make him grin, for all the effort it takes to dredge up the information from his memory. Orochimaru’s a bit more lax when testing his memory of scrolls he’s read in the past. Not so much when he’s just finished reading them, though. Supposedly, it’s fresher in his memory that way. (Sakumo disagrees. Strongly)

*

“This technique gives me a headache every time I use it, you know,” Sakumo points out, dangling between two giant bamboo stalks with his eyes focused on the Iwa camp a kilometer away.

“You’ve only used it twice before,” Orochimaru points out beside him, and Sakumo hears the rustling of cloth and the sound of a quill gliding across parchment.

“What are you doing?” he questions curiously even as he follows the movement of the groups of shinobi patrolling the perimeters of the camp.

“Reminding myself why I shouldn’t kill you,” comes the dry response. “I haven’t thought of one yet.”

Sakumo snorts before he can help it, “Aw, but I thought you loved me, Orochimaru!” and reflexively loosens his grip on the bamboo stalks, plummeting down a meter just in time to avoid the large gray projectile that goes flying over his head. The chakra supply to his eyes is cut off in his surprise, and he blinks rapidly to adjust to the change in his vision before jerking his head down to the side, eyes searching for whatever Orochimaru had just thrown at him. It was far too large to be a senbon and larger than a kunai, so… “Did you just throw an actual sword at me?”

“No,” Orochimaru drawls above him, “I didn’t throw anything at you at all, actually.”

“Eh? Then…” Sakumo trails off, glancing down. A long, serpentine body winds its way up his body, three different heads peering curiously into his face. For a moment, he blinks, and then a blinding smile crosses his face, “Hey, I’ve never seen a three-headed snake before. Are you an adult snake? Your coils are really thick already, and you have a very long body, so you must be at least close to fully grown.”

“Actually, they’re still considered nestlings,” Orochimaru drops down in front of Sakumo, holding himself to the bamboo stalk with only one hand loosely curled around the plant. He reaches out and runs his hand down the body of the three snakes. “As seen by their immaturity in lunging for you earlier without my prompting. They’ll grow at least four times their size right now since they’ll be some of my larger summons. Which you should know, Sakumo,” he adds pointedly, and Sakumo hides a sigh, already anticipating a long lecture and many painful lessons under the pretense of training, “as these three have much more chakra in them than my smaller summons.

Sakumo shrugs as much as he can with 3 meters of snake wound around him and smiles sheepishly, “I didn’t know your summons could grow so large.” Orochimaru raises a silent, judging eyebrow, and Sakumo laughs again, “Okay, I probably should have guessed, but the wolf summons rarely grow to be larger than houses.”

“Some do, though,” Orochimaru points out.

Sakumo is about to argue that point before he remembers that Hangaku is probably the same height as the Hokage Monument and reconsiders.

“Very few of them, though,” he settles for instead with a wry grin. “And none of them have multiple heads. What are their names, by the way?”

Orochimaru shrugs bonelessly, reaching out and coaxing his summons off Sakumo with strokes and gestures, “If you say so. And they haven’t decided on what they want to be called yet. They’re ‘Sanhai’ for now.”

“…”

_Decided on what they want to be called yet? You mean they actually rename themselves? And what’s with that name? ‘San’ and ‘Hai’ as in ‘Three’ and ‘Gray?’ What an obvious copout._

Sakumo deadpans but doesn’t voice any of the thoughts running through his mind. Instead, he starts shifting his grip to pull himself upwards, body swinging back and forth in a tight, controlled arc.

“Now continue gathering intel on the Iwa camp. Take note especially on behavior and appearances,” Orochimaru ‘suggests’ (Sakumo knows it’s more a warning than anything). “You may choose between memorizing the exact details of 3 people of your choice and memorizing the general details of randomly selected shinobi in the camp. You have one hour and two breaks, during which you’ll review what little you know on human and animal biology.”

“Um,” says Sakumo, which is never a good idea around Orochimaru when the Sannin is in the mood for actually teaching.

“One hour, Hatake. Start moving,” there is another eye roll, and Sakumo suppresses the urge to scowl himself.

Ten minutes later, he cuts off the flow of chakra to his eyes and shifts into a more comfortable position, casting a sidelong look at Orochimaru where the Sannin is hanging upside down by only his crossed ankles, eyes closed.

 _He must be tired to go back to sleep just after he woke up,_ Sakumo muses. _Granted, he didn’t sleep that long, but shinobi usually don’t like sleeping in the presence of others, especially because of wartime instincts…_

He peers closer.

He hadn’t noticed until he thought to look for them, but there are bags under Orochimaru’s closed eyes. On Orochimaru, they’re…off. Peculiar. Strange. _Foreign,_ almost, because they don’t really belong on Orochimaru’s still young and otherwise flawless features.

Sakumo sighs softly and goes back to people-watching. He’ll irritate Orochimaru later. Preferably with Suka; he knows she’s probably annoyed with the Sannin.

Absently, he watches as the group of shinobi patrolling outside the camp slip into a trapdoor tunnel that leads into the camp just as another group leaps over the walls.

 _Hm. That could come in handy later on,_ he thinks.

*

He’s right, of course.

Orochimaru scares Sakumo half to death when he speaks up at the end of the hour, still hanging upside down, with eyes still closed, and calmly orders Sakumo to send a clone, “any type of clone, and a shadow clone, if you’re idiotic enough to want to waste the chakra” into the Iwa camp. No details. No assistance.

Sakumo ends up having a shadow clone henge into one of the Iwa members out on patrol and watches as it seamlessly ambushes and replaces the shinobi it is henged into, all within two seconds, using an area genjutsu to ensure that the other members of the patrol will not notice.

He watches dispassionately as it emerges from the tunnel with the other members of the patrol team, disappears into the barracks, and dismisses itself a minute or so later.

“A waste of chakra, like I said,” Orochimaru finally opens his eyes, “but effective nonetheless. You could have moved closer to the camp and used a different solid clone technique. Alternatively, you could have had your clone use the Replacement jutsu on the Iwa shinobi, which would have enabled you to interrogate him and dispose of him at your own pace.”

Sakumo lets himself freefall until his feet dangle only a meter off the ground, and then he stops his descent and flops backwards onto the grass.

“It worked, didn’t it?” he questions, rubbing at his eyes. “They’ll always be better ways to do things, but at least it worked.”

“Hm. I suppose so. I certainly could tell that you were putting my lessons on subtlety to use. You’ve certainly improved from your first attempted infiltration,” Orochimaru’s voice is smooth and filled with schadenfreude as he lands lightly on the ground.

Sakumo flushes at the memory of his first Orochimaru-assigned mission (and the first mission he’s ever failed before, excluding the mission that had started the Third Shinobi War).

“I was never trained in infiltration, you know,” he points out in embarrassed irritation. “I specialized in direct combat, not espionage.”

“Hm,” Orochimaru hums non-committedly, and Sakumo automatically rolls his eyes.

“Really!” he sits up, an exasperated grin on his face even as the other nods in mock-seriousness.

“Yes, yes, of course I believe you. After all, you specialized in one thing and couldn’t possibly consider learning something unrelated to the sort of direct combat only an idiot would engage in.”

Sakumo tries to defend himself in between laughing as Orochimaru belittles specialties in general, but the snake-summoner has a tongue of silver when he chooses to use it, and Sakumo hardly has enough air to breathe, let alone speak, with how hard he's laughing.

At the end of it all, he's flopped back on the grass and grinning helplessly, breathlessly, at the night sky, “Yeah, yeah, I was complacent and stupid. I get it,” he turns his head towards Orochimaru, still smiling. “I’m better now though, aren’t I?”

“Only because I came and woke you up,” Orochimaru sniffs haughtily, and Sakumo just closes his eyes with a smile, not disagreeing.

(It’s true)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for so many responses last chapter, especially if you provided reasons for why you wanted Danzo as a neutral/antihero/villain! :) I'm mostly decided on what Danzo's role will be (I won't say what just yet), but until I've actually posted that scene/chapter, you're free to share your opinions and/or try to convince me of what you'd like to see.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	16. the explosive spontaneity of battle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

“This is ridiculous,” Orochimaru states flatly, warily eying the wolf prowling in front of him.

It bares its teeth at him in response, white teeth sharp and pointed against the pitch black of its fur, and he instinctively relaxes into a battle-ready pose, hand sliding to the kunai pouch sewn into his yukata. His chakra spikes threateningly before he wrests it back under his control. 

The thin material of his yukata makes it easier to wash his clothing free of blood and dries faster, but it’s unsuited for the chilly weather. He’s been circulating his chakra just beneath his skin in order to keep warm, but that means that his control can slip that much easier.

Sakumo slides between Orochimaru and the wolf with a laugh just a little too quick to be natural, “Now, now, let’s not go around murdering my summons, Orochimaru. And it’s not ridiculous at all! They’ll start wondering who you are once you start attracting attention, but they’ll connect you with me if they see you with—”

“Your summons is taller than I am,” the Sannin points out with a scowl.

“Haha, well, um…yeah, Takeshi is one of my largest summons, but he’s good at teamwork and stuff. I think you’ll get along well if you give him a chance,” Sakumo smiles cheerfully (and a little nervously) at Orochimaru as he pats the wolf on the side.

The wolf bares its teeth.

Orochimaru resists the urge to do the same and instead raises an eyebrow at Sakumo.

“You said you didn’t want to ride snake summons into battle,” Sakumo points out weakly.

“That was because my serpents are associated with me and would thus render the existence of a henge useless. It was not an invitation to try to partner me with an overgrown mutt like yourself, Sakumo,” he sighs, but nonetheless steps forward, ignoring the twin yelps of indignation with practiced ease.

He leaps lightly off the ground, landing lightly on the wolf’s back, and settles carefully, making sure to keep himself balanced and attached to the wolf with a generous amount of chakra. Absently, he checks his weapons cache. Kusanagi is strapped to his back, and the weapons pouches along the sides of his yukata are half-filled with shuriken and kunai that have exploding tags wrapped around their hilts. Satisfied (too many weapons would weigh him down, and he doesn’t plan on using the throwing weapons very much), he effortlessly applies the henge he and Sakumo had eventually agreed upon.

Sakumo’s disguise has much the same physique as his natural one—tall, with shoulders broad, and with a body more muscled than toned. Orochimaru chooses the build of his henge with the same reasoning that fighting with a build he’s unaccustomed to is extremely dangerous, especially since he hasn’t had the time to train his reflexes or adjust his fighting style to a different build.

He ends up with eyes less slanted, slightly wider, and a dark gray color, accentuated by a fall of hair the color of white gold that he brushes back from his eyes, leaving it down rather than imitating Sakumo’s (completely impractical, not that he has any room to talk) hairstyle. A stronger jaw, sharper angles to his face instead of gentle slopes half-softening the edges—

He skims a hand along the unfamiliarly rough contours of his face, notes the light tan and faded scars on his skin where there was formerly only unmarred white, and glances down towards Sakumo.

“I’ll circle around and start attacking from the Konoha side, since Tsukiko and I travel quickly together. Meet in the middle?” Sakumo offers, effortlessly slipping onto the back of a smaller silver wolf.

“If you make it that far,” Orochimaru amusedly responds, reaching forward and threading his fingers through black fur. “Don’t play with your food too much. Iwa has quite a few suicide bombers from what I remember, and you seem to be quite adept at driving people to their breaking points.”

“Eh, I’m not _that_ bad,” Sakumo scratches the back of his head sheepishly. “Anyways, the sun’s starting to rise already, so I should get going. Later, Oro,” Sakumo waves lazily, leans forward to wrap his arms around a silver-furred neck marred with scars, and disappears almost silently into the forest around them.

Orochimaru pointedly doesn’t move to do the same, pooling chakra around his legs and hands. He tugs gently at the fur beneath him to make sure he’s secured, and then scowls as the wolf beneath him doesn’t move.

“…Let’s go,” he mutters eventually, burying his other hand within the fur and ducking forward abruptly as it takes off almost instantly without bothering to give him a warning.

He spits hair out of his mouth irritably, narrowing his eyes against the wind.

_Wolves._

*

He launches himself off the wolf with the wind roaring in his ears and alarmed shouts sounding, and he plows through several shinobi with just one leap. Kusanagi flashes behind him as he attacks, and he senses more than sees the black wolf— _Takeshi,_ he thinks with a faint wrinkle to his nose—skid to a stop more than 10 meters away and start tearing through the fighters in its vicinity.

He incorporates far more evasion and flips than he prefers, taking people down from behind in rapid combinations of shunshin and swordplay. There’s barely enough time to think, only instinct and reflexes as he whirls through a never-ending sea of opponents. At some point (he doesn’t remember when, only that the sun is low in the sky when he manages to register something beyond battle instinct and _killkillkill_ ), he ends up fighting alongside Sakumo’s wolf summons. Or, well, as ‘alongside’ as the two of them could fight. Neither of them have methods of fighting suited towards teamwork. Orochimaru is flitting through the lines and eliminating shinobi in a style more typical to ANBU assassinations, and the wolf is essentially a whirlwind of claws, fangs, and muscle moving far faster than its bulk implies is possible. They remain within a few meters of each other, though, both retreating towards each other and covering each other’s weaknesses.

This war less tests skill and prowess and more tests reaction time and instincts. More than once, Orochimaru finds himself milliseconds away from skewering more than one Konoha shinobi, only just remembering that they are technically ‘allies’ with him, for all that they’re unaware of his existence. And more than once does he barely clear the ground before hands burst up, grasping wildly.

This isn’t a large-scale battle like the one with Hanzo. He’s not at liberty to use flashy ninjutsu or summons or even reckless moves. Tsunade and Jiraiya are no longer beside him; he no longer has the assurance of his teammates, no longer has the knowledge that there will always be someone to cover his weak spots. This is a never-ending mission, a pseudo-assassination of as many non-Konoha shinobi as he can kill. This is him trapped in a never-ending cycle of killing and defending his weak spots, and this is him fighting alone.

He should be happy, really, that he can fight alone. This way, there’s no one he has to remember not to kill, no one he has to protect, no one to distract him from his fighting. He’s far freer this way, far less restrained, and yet he finds himself increasingly dissatisfied, increasingly exhausted, increasingly frustrated.

Fighting alone brings back too many memories of running ANBU and jounin missions alike without the safety net of a team. It reminds him of solo missions run in the dead of night that were better suited towards being run by a team, but assigned to him because he was a Sannin. _One of the Legendary Three. Invincible,_ he remembers someone sneering behind him as he walked out of the ANBU commander’s office, the ANBU tattoo on his arm still fresh and sore, but with a mission scroll clutched tightly in white-knuckled hands. The missions he was assigned both by the ANBU commander and by Sarutobi-sensei were not quite suicide missions, but when run without a team, they were significantly more dangerous than the missions generally assigned to shinobi in Konoha (and of course he ran them alone. He couldn’t even call upon Tsunade and Jiraiya to back him up, not anymore, not when they’d _left him_ , and who else could he call upon as support? Certainly no one in Konoha).

Beyond that, fighting alone brings back memories of nights spent in uncomfortably cramped positions, hiding in silent darkness and trying to ignore the peculiar aching in his torso as he thought of sitting around a campfire with Jiraiya and Tsunade, the three of them secure in the knowledge of their strength and spirits high despite the danger in revealing their positions. His serpents, although more often than not they sleep on him instead of keeping watch as he requests them to, keep those darker memories at bay. It’s since become habit for him to have at least one of them with him at all times, despite the small chakra drain, but as much as he itches to summon one of them now, it’s not an option.

Flipping off the ground again as grasping hands surface, he scowls, flicking a kunai into the ground with enough force to bury the hilt inside the ground. A tug at his chakra even as he launches himself onto a shinobi wearing a Kumo hitai-ate, and dirt explodes through the air.

His eyes flick across the battlefield even as he shunshins between opponents and his chakra reaches out, seeking.

It’s almost evening, and he hasn’t sensed Sakumo since dawn.

*

Sakumo doesn’t bother giving a warning before he’s throwing himself forward almost parallel to the ground and latching onto Hayato as the silver wolf barrels past him. Hayato doesn’t stop, thankfully heavy enough that Sakumo’s momentum doesn’t even throw him a centimeter off course. Sakumo pulls himself upright almost immediately, twisting slightly. There’s a trio of Iwa-nin—jounin, he thinks, from their vests, but he’s not completely certain—hot on Hayato’s heels. They might be from the Explosion Corps, given how volatile their chakra signatures feel, but Iwa-nin in general seem to have chakra less settled than Konoha-nin.

Something flies by his face and goes off with a loud boom as it hits the ground, Hayato veering wildly to the side.

 _Ah, so I was right. At least one of them is part of the Explosion Corps. I wonder why they’re so dead-set on pursuing us,_ he muses, sheathing both his katana and wakizashi as Hayato leads their pursuers in circles, easily clearing heads and trampling people he identifies as enemies. Sakumo carefully withdraws six shuriken from the pouch strapped to his knee and twists his torso almost 180 degrees to the right, leaning his right hand on Hayato as his left bristles with the throwing stars. He narrows his eyes, trusting Hayato’s speed and power to keep him safe, and throws with all of his strength.

The one in the lead goes down with four of the shuriken buried in him, the other two veering off course in the wind. Sakumo scowls, turning back and just barely unsheathing his wakizashi in time to block the blade of a naginata. He throws his arm up almost instantly, sending the kunoichi careening off Hayato, and tosses a kunai after her for good measure.

 _Kunai might be more balanced, given the speed we’re going,_ he muses, withdrawing three kunai (from a different pouch, this time), one with an exploding tag around its hilt. He ends up twisting his legs abruptly so that he’s riding Hayato backwards, legs clamped tightly around Hayato’s body, so that he can throw more accurately.

 _One at a time,_ he reminds himself, _and have faith._ Hayato isn’t even close to the largest summons he has, but the wolf is light on his paws and has brilliant reflexes, so Sakumo breathes evenly and makes sure he’s aiming carefully. He only has so many kunai, after all, and these are a quality of perfect balance and razor sharp edges that can be hard to find. Exploding tags are pretty expensive too, and he brought very few of them with him, given how rarely they’re ever used. 

_Then again, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire,_ he grins wryly, and flicks his wrist. The first kunai hits one of the two remaining in the face. Not quite her eye, but somewhere between the cheekbone and the jaw. She goes down with a spurt of blood and a cry that Sakumo can hear even through the wind and the other shouts in the battle. It’s a messy death, probably slow and definitely painful, and Sakumo’s lips tug down. There’s no time for regret, though, so he hurls the second kunai with an equal amount of strength and finesse. It skims the leg of the one remaining shinobi, but she barely even slows down.

Sakumo tosses the last kunai without another moment’s hesitation, already drawing his katana and whipping back around before he sees if it’s hit. He activates the exploding tag, holds on to Hayato as they clear a rising wall of mud before them, and parries a hurled swarm of kunai. From behind, there’s a flicker of volatile chakra; ahead, he sees Takeshi and beside him, a man unfamiliar at first before he remembers that his teacher’s henge.

There’s a brief feeling of foreboding as he draws nearer to Orochimaru, and he turns his head to see the kunoichi from Iwa incredibly close. His eyes widen— _Iwa has quite a few suicide bombers from what I remember,_ Orochimaru’s voice echoes in his ears—and he whips back around, leaning forward onto Hayato in a vain attempt to urge him faster.

Not even 10 meters away, Orochimaru’s henged form turns, hair the color of the palest gold flying up a little around him. Gray eyes widen and slip back into golden, a hand stretches out to him—

The chakra signature behind him surges with a violent, malicious intent.

The world explodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~I'm a terrible person.~~
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> First of all, I apologize for the delay! RL has left me a little behind on writing and replying to reviews, but I just really want to say thank you to everyone who left a comment. I read through them almost daily and have more than a few saved on my phone for when I need encouragement/motivation. It's really helpful to see what you guys are thinking, and I sincerely appreciate you taking the time out of your day to leave even a small "Nice chapter" for me.
> 
> Also, is mention of killing/war alright with you guys? I'm changing the tag of "minor violence" to "canon-typical violence" but I assumed that the vague mentions of death would be alright with everyone (seeing as it's not detailed blood/gore/torture/etc). Please don't hesitate to ask at least for warnings at the beginning of the chapter, if that's preferred.
> 
> I'm actually surprised I managed to post this chapter at all, given that it's finals week and I've bruised multiple fingers lately (which have made typing very, very slow and painful). The semester's ending though, so I should be back to normal soon!
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	17. the meaning of trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I came across [super awesome tumblr post](http://blackkatmagic.tumblr.com/post/154400848690/fanfic-writers-hmmm-this-fanfic-is-going-really) that I felt defined me last chapter haha:
> 
> FANFIC WRITERS: hmmm this fanfic is going really well...  
> READERS: yeah why?  
> FANFIC WRITERS: i guess it would be a shame if i....  
> READERS: nOOooO  
> FANFIC WRITERS: dId A tHinG  
> READERS: OH NO  
> FANFIC WRITERS: OH YES
> 
> I know you love me. *winks*
> 
> Please enjoy.

For the first time since his parents’ death, he can’t think.

For one full second, there are no thoughts running through his mind, no emotions coursing through him.

For one full second, he stares into a cloud of smoke and dust, henge gone, golden eyes wide and a hand uselessly extended before him. His breathing is even. His muscles are relaxed. His heart keeps beating steadily. There is a chaos around him that he doesn’t quite hear, shouts and screams filtering distantly through his ears, nonsensical sounds he cannot comprehend.

For one full second, he cannot react.

A howl sounds one moment later, furious, anguished, and then Orochimaru jerks into action.

It’s not even a conscious decision to send chakra surging into a summoning jutsu. Manda bursts up behind him amidst clouds of smoke, hissing violently. Fury and anger roll through Orochimaru’s chakra as he lunges, deadly ninjutsu and Killing Intent blasting a path before him.

 _Suicide bomber,_ he snarls, hate and fear mixed in equal measure within him. His hands are shaking, fingers flexing so hard they’re going numb, as he dives forward, grasping blindly along the dirt as his chakra searches frantically. _Suicide bomber; I warned him. The utter **idiot** ; he should have summoned his other wolves if he needed help—heavens knows he has more than enough of those mutts lying around—or else signaled to me. And of course a wolf wouldn’t move faster than a practiced shunshin; why didn’t he manage to kill them first—_

His chakra latches onto Sakumo’s amidst the dissipating, chakra-imbued smoke from the explosion, and he lunges forward, raven hair falling in his eyes. His fingers brush Sakumo’s arm, and he wraps his hand around the limb with a firm but gentle grip, flaring his chakra once, hard.

Manda swallows them without hesitation and dives into the ground.

*

They don’t go far. Orochimaru doesn’t dare risk a shunshin with Sakumo in tow, and even less so is he willing to perform a reverse-summoning. The best option is Manda, who travels rapidly and incredibly smoothly both across the earth and underground. Only seconds after he’s swallowed them, they surface several kilometers away, Orochimaru running a diagnostic jutsu on Sakumo. The serpent unhinges his jaw close to the ground, and Orochimaru swiftly leaps out, Sakumo in his arms. Gently, he lays his student onto the grass, falling to his knees beside him. He doesn’t acknowledge Manda—there’s no time, not with Sakumo in such need of healing —but he senses the boss summons dismissing himself without complaint. The results of the diagnostic jutsu coming back to him return his attention to his student and Sakumo's injuries, which are miraculously not as terrible as he expected. A certain tenseness leaves the Sannin's shoulders as he registers the information, and he exhales, feeling himself relax ever so slightly as he starts to tend to Sakumo’s wounds.

The remnants of Sakumo’s yukata are carefully but swiftly peeled off of badly burned skin, Orochimaru’s hands coated in as gentle a healing chakra as is possible for him. He completes a simple D-rank water jutsu with a few hand signs, and cool water starts to pour out of his left palm at a relatively slow but steady rate. He moves his hand back and forth across Sakumo’s back, lingering a little over the worst of the burns, while his right hand reaches over to scan the damage done to Sakumo’s eardrums. It's...admittedly dissatisfying when the results of a diagnostic jutsu specific to that region come back. He heals his student's ears as much as he can, but Sakumo’s advanced hearing is a curse in this situation and has been damaged much more extensively than is possible for Orochimaru to heal. While he's experimented with multiple bloodline-limits and the advantages granted to wielders of said bloodline-limits, each bloodline-limit functions differently. He’s not a genius medic-nin like Tsunade, so he can't analyze the way Sakumo's bloodline-limit works at just a glance and heal everything from there. Beyond that, however, he doesn’t want to risk injuring his student further by healing him improperly. The most he can do is a patch-job, and the rest is up to Sakumo’s chakra.

Scowling and cursing his student’s idiocy yet again, he moves his hand down to heal the minor swelling and irritation in Sakumo’s throat and lung tissue before he turns his attention to the burns on Sakumo’s neck and back.

The skin is, thankfully, not beyond repair, most likely due to Sakumo’s chakra reacting instinctively to protect himself. The burns on his neck are relatively minor and quickly smoothed away. The ones on his back, on the other hand, are more serious. Most of them Orochimaru manages to heal into skin that is new and tender, though there are raw tissue and nerves still exposed here and there. 

He can’t heal all of them, though.

The worst burns are on the lowest part of Sakumo’s ribcage, the middle part of his back, where the explosion was most concentrated, and those are ones he cannot--will not--heal.

They’re chakra burns, lingering chakra from the explosion and made volatile and dangerous by the suicide jutsu. It clings stubbornly to Sakumo’s skin, claws buried in the chakra veins running beneath Sakumo’s skin, and Orochimaru hesitates over it.

It’s dangerous, to try and heal chakra burns from a jutsu like that, because the explosion’s chakra is almost a sentient being in and of itself. It carries on the will of the suicide bomber and has already entangled itself with Sakumo’s own chakra, and to risk removing it is to risk permanently damaging Sakumo’s chakra network as a whole.

The Sannin sits back on his heels with a frustrated huff, left hand remaining hovering above the worst of the burns to pour cool water onto still-heated skin. He closes his eyes, mind racing.

Even the most competent field medic would struggle with the results of that suicide jutsu. Iwa’s Explosion Corps are famed for the complexity and effectiveness (even after the initial explosion) of that jutsu in particular. Tsunade is the only one he can think of whom he would trust to heal these burns, and even then there’s a high chance that she would irreparably damage the chakra coils in Sakumo’s back, which would disrupt the flow of chakra within his entire body. On the other hand, if it’s not removed, the foreign chakra will continue to integrate itself into Sakumo’s chakra network until it reaches the center of his chakra, where it swirls in his stomach. (And then...and then it will explode, and Sakumo will be, at _best_ , crippled both in his body and his chakra. And...And at worst, he’ll die a slow and messy death, torn apart from the inside by a chakra that is inherently foreign but which has latched onto his chakra so much that his chakra system will not fight it, thinking it a part of itself. Simply entertaining the possibility of that happening makes Orochimaru feel like someone is trying to drag his heart out of his chest, and he shoves the thought away violently)

His right hand fists itself in the thin material of his yukata— _would I even find Tsunade in time?_ —and there is something twisting in his stomach and chest and rising up in his throat until he’s almost choking on it. It tastes bitter and hopeless, like frustration and fury he can do nothing against. _I can’t leave Sakumo on his own for so long; it would take too long for me to find Tsunade. I’ll have to detach the foreign chakra myself while it hasn’t invaded Sakumo’s system as much, and if it doesn’t work, then I’ll—_ He grits his teeth, flexing his fingers as he lifts his right hand to hover above the burns next to his left hand, both hands starting to flicker brighter with green healing chakra. _It’ll work. It **has** to work, or else—_

“Orochimaru-sama,” comes a soft hiss from behind him.

He jerks and before he even thinks to react has already instinctively pivoted on one knee to face the new presence, shifting back into a crouch over his left knee. Most of his weight is being rested on the ball of his left foot, and the rest is being rested on the ball of his right foot, his right leg extended further out in front of him towards the origin of the sound. His eyes glaze over slightly as he takes in everything and anything at once, relying more on his hearing and chakra sense than his sight, and he’s ready to move (to protect Sakumo) at a moment’s notice. It takes a few seconds for him to register that nothing has moved in the clearing, that no one is attacking, and then he blinks, straightening slightly. Golden eyes refocus, scanning the clearing curiously (and a little warily), and catch on a glimmer of blue-green.

“Seia,” he says faintly at the sight of the small summons, mind whirling through possibilities and actions. “Seia,” he repeats, blinking again and feeling himself start to come more alive as he lets himself abandon the impromptu battle pose. He lets his knees rest upon the ground as he leans forward, hands cupping the serpent up into his palms and lifting her to eye level. “I didn’t notice your chakra signature earlier.”

“Rei was concealing it for me so that we would escape the notice of hostiles,” she answers his unspoken question, and Orochimaru tilts his head to the side, eyes sliding upwards and past Seia. 

There’s a girl, just a few meters away, lingering beside a tree. Her coloring is faintly familiar, but different than when he last saw her. Her skin, once sickly white from lack of sun, has a healthy glow to it, although it’s still pale. She has blue eyes a few shades lighter, less haunted, less sunken, and framed by a shock of messy white hair brushing her shoulders. When she notices his gaze, she offers a tentative smile, twisting her fingers together nervously in front of her.

She looks better than she did in Ame, most definitely thanks to Seia, and he doesn’t think she will ask him to kill her any time soon. He inclines his head, raven strands of hair slipping over his shoulder, and returns his attention to Seia.

“She’s stable now; her name is Rei,” Seia offers, and Orochimaru listens patiently even though most of his attention is on Sakumo. “We discovered two weeks ago that she has the ability to manipulate the chakra of herself and other people when she is in skin contact with them. I thought you might be interested in her ability, and since we sensed your chakra signature in the area a few days ago, we decided to seek you out. She is very skilled with chakra manipulation, Orochimaru-sama,” Seia adds, twining around his wrists.

For just a second, Orochimaru weighs the risks and benefits and turns his evaluating gaze on the girl in question. The child watches him uncertainly, hands stilling before her, and after a moment, he nods.

“Rei,” he keeps his voice soft and not forceful, settling his hands in his lap and letting Seia wind her way up his body. “Will you heal my student?”

There’s no expectation in his voice, no doubt or judgment.

 _Will you_ , he says. Not _can you_ or _do you know how to_ , but _will you_.

He doesn’t know if that’s what convinces her, in the end, but he thinks it might have helped. The girl nods, makes a quiet sound of affirmation, and steps over, the hesitation clearing from her eyes.

She kneels down beside him, facing Sakumo, and he starts to inform her on the wound and the nature of the explosive chakra.

 _This must be trust,_ he realizes as he watches her heal, sitting silently off to the side. _Trust in Seia’s ability to evaluate others, and trust in the girl’s ability to manipulate chakra._

He’s known before what trust mean, of course. Intellectually, he knows it means leaving something important to you in someone else’s hands. Logically, he knows that he’s trusted several people before—his summons, his teammates, even the stranger-comrades he’s been assigned as partners for missions—that he’s trusted them to do their part and to protect him.

Realistically, however, nothing he's either felt or experienced has been so close to the meaning of ‘trust’ as now, being forced to watch, helpless, and leaving his student’s faith in the hands of a girl he remembers only with having a death wish.

 _Trust,_ he reminds himself. _Trust._

He’s never known it in its truest form before now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Rei is the girl who led him to the casino in Ame and asked him to kill her. I implied that she was still alive with Jiraiya and Orochimaru's meeting (also in Ame) when Jiriaya said that he was following rumors of a girl traveling with a serpent and performing feats of magic and thus why he was so far from Amegakure, where the Ame Orphans were waging a civil war against Hanzo.
> 
> Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it (and happy holidays to those of you who don't)! Thank you to everyone who has been supporting me! I am steadily losing motivation for anything but sleeping, but there have been a lot of kind reviews and comments that help me keep writing <3
> 
> Edit (1/8/2017) Happy New Year, everyone! :) Hope your years are going well. I'm currently regretting my life choices and struggling with life, but I will be updating in the next few days; thank you for your patience!
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	18. the one where everyone is sleeping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Please note that this is a double update. It has been split into 2 chapters because it feels better that way, but I haven't updated before this because I felt like they were better read together.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Please enjoy.

Sakumo wakes up to eyelids bathed in red, a pounding headache, and sunlight stabbing holes into his eyes where they’re just barely cracked open. Sleeping like that is all but second nature at this point, and it’s served him well in the past, but he’s never regretted the odd habit more.

It’s far from the best wake-up call he could have (or has ever had), but as he’s been trained to do, he holds back the pathetic moan trying to escape his vocal chords in favor of faking unconsciousness. It’s difficult, to keep completely still without his muscles tensing up, especially when he is painfully conscious of the uncomfortable angle to his neck, the rock digging into his side, the stinging against his bare back, and—

 _Inhale, exhale,_ he orders himself, forcing himself to concentrate only on that, and with each even breath, he distances himself further from the pain until, finally, he is entirely focused on the scent of grass and trees and nature in the air and the distant bird calls sounding through the dull ringing in his ears—

And the chakra signatures flickering a few meters away. The sun is blindingly distracting (he can’t see anything because it’s shining directly in his eyes, what bad luck), and the world is spinning beneath him, but he’s conscious enough (or, rather, _has suffered through enough lessons from Orochimaru_ ) to realize that they’re there. He listens carefully, breathing silent and steady despite the combined dizziness and aching in his head, and waits patiently until the silence is broken.

It takes some time (exactly how long, he doesn’t know, but he’d wager it took a few minutes or so), but eventually he hears something besides shuffling and faint animal sounds. An unfamiliar voice murmurs a few meters away. It’s pitched low enough that the words are indistinct, but not so low that he can’t hear it at all. It sounds high and sweet— _a child,_ he thinks. _A girl, perhaps_ , but he doesn’t let his guard down.

He can’t, really. Not here, not now. Few children are as fortunate as Konoha’s—he’s seen more than his fair share of children on the battlefield. Most of them are from Iwa, but there are children from other large Hidden Villages, some from smaller shinobi villages, and a few that were probably snatched from civilian villages. All of them exist on the battlefield, although they’re generally unskilled (very few of the children he’s seen have the skills of even an Academy student). They amount to little more than cannon fodder, in the end, and he’s never quite been able to bring himself to kill them. It’s not much use—they’ll die anyways—but it’s better than cutting them down himself. 

(He sees Kakashi’s face in them, sees Kakashi among them. Konoha’s standard wartime graduation age may be nine now, but he remembers when it was six. He was _there_ when it was six, had graduated at six years old and gained field experience through missions that took his team near the battlefield but rarely directly to it. Kakashi is five now, will _graduate_ at five, and many, many of the children fighting on the battlefield are around that age. Five, six, seven—the other Villages haven’t changed their wartime graduation ages. These ‘shinobi’ are children still, and while he’d never let his guard down around them, he’d never kill them unless he absolutely had to. And that would be never)

Still, as he listens to the rise and fall of the speech—soft, respectful, slightly hesitant—he finds himself less wary. Still cautious (always cautious) and still ready to move at any given point in time (despite the potentially incapacitating pain thrumming through him), but the owner of the voice sounds gentle. Compassionate, not a fighter, and thus not someone he’d have to fight or incapacitate if it came to that.

Ignoring the aching soreness that seems to have sunk into even his bones, he concentrates on the sounds. There’s a slight pause, a lull in the speech, and then another voice picks up, speaking quietly but not so much so that Sakumo cannot hear the words. A somewhat softer voice by nature, and it is low, calm—and familiar.

That much Sakumo can realize, even if there is an increasing pressure around his temples and he can hardly hear anything over the ringing in his ears. At the familiar sound of Orochimaru’s voice, he lets go of the deceptive looseness to his body, relaxes and lets himself move. He closes his eyes fully, rolls over onto his front, and rolls his neck before he settles his head onto folded arms. For a moment, he basks in the satisfying looseness, the dappled sunlight keeping him warm but not hot in the crisp air, and the cool grass beneath him. Then he slips gratefully back into unconsciousness, tired but content.

*

Orochimaru watches Sakumo pensively, eyes distant, elbow propped up on his knee and cradling his cheek in the palm of his hand. Seia coils around him, silent but present, and automatically, he lifts his other hand to rest upon the smooth scales of her head. 

Sakumo is still injured, and Orochimaru is…unhappy with that.

While the girl— _Rei_ , he reminds himself, _she prefers being called by her name_ —removed the malicious chakra and (by some miracle) smoothed out all the disruptions in Sakumo’s chakra network until it seemed that there had never been any disruptions at all, Sakumo hasn’t healed fully. There are still chakra burns Orochimaru has only barely dealt with, still delicate injuries he doesn’t know how to fix.

He lets out a tired, heavy sigh, threading his fingers through his hair and tugging at it in frustration. Opposite to him, half-hidden behind the roots of an enormous tree, Rei glances over, the leaf stuck to her nose now falling off, and Seia butts her head against his other palm reprovingly. Startled, he automatically straightens from his slight slouch, hand dropping to dangle over his foot, and glances over at her.

“You worry too much. Rest,” she says, and nothing more.

He huffs in fond exasperation, feeling a little bit like protesting but too tired to really do anything but murmur back, “For some reason, I doubt Sakumo would be put at ease if he’s met with the two of you upon awakening. Better that I be conscious and present to explain.”

His summons looks far from impressed, even as he gently trails an appeasing hand over her scales, “You’ve used up most of your chakra in healing him, Orochimaru-sama. I’ll wake you when he shows signs of consciousness, but you’re barely conscious as it is.”

He doesn’t argue—can’t really argue, not when he knows it’s true. He hasn’t fully recovered from his travel across the Elemental Nations, not quite. It takes time to move past that haze of memories—running through sleepless nights, exhaustion dragging him down and a migraine pounding more and more at his temples with each passing moment. 

He’s not quite as tired anymore, now that he’s been able to sleep at least a few hours every night, but there are still occasional headaches and dizziness, black spots in his vision and ringing in his ears. They go away eventually, though, if he ignores them for long enough—the problem is that his exhaustion doesn’t leave with them. It’s mental more than physical, but always pressing at the edge of his awareness. Now that there’s nothing requiring his immediate attention, nothing that he currently _needs_ to do, nothing to distract him, it’s weighing down on him more than he wants to admit, and he feels it distinctly in the elusiveness of his thoughts, the heaviness to his limbs, and the weariness that seems to have sunk into even his bones. It presses roughly at his temples, stings at his eyes, and—

And it’s stronger than he wants to admit. He forces open golden eyes he didn’t realize he closed (didn’t realize he wanted to close) and blinks rapidly to ward off the sensation of pinpricks and swimming darkness. His vision focuses on Seia, who is watching him with an unreadable, impossibly complex gaze.

“Rest,” she repeats gently, in snake tongue this time. 

It’s a peaceful sound. Long, soft, a drawn out hiss filled with quiet concern.

Orochimaru closes his eyes.

*

“How are you feeling?” is what Sakumo is immediately greeted with when he returns to consciousness again, lying on his side with grass tickling his nose.

It’s Orochimaru speaking, he just knows it is, because he hasn’t even had the chance to think yet, let alone give any sign that he’s woken. Only his crazy teacher would be able to tell the difference between his states of consciousness, so Sakumo doesn’t feel any hesitation in prying open his mouth and letting out a wordless, miserable croak through a throat that feels as dry as Suna’s desert.

“I’ll assume that’s a signal for water,” Orochimaru dryly responds. 

A cool hand gently settles on his shoulder, turning him over carefully. When his head starts to tip back as he turns, another hand catches him, cradling the back of his skull gently, as the other hand slides down to grip his bicep in a firm but not painful grip. Slowly, with obvious care, Sakumo is levered up into an almost sitting position. He makes a vaguely pained noise in the back of his throat when sore muscles protest the movement, but his eyes are refusing to open and he still feels sore all over.

“Seia,” a soft call, clearly not for him, and then there is something wooden being pressed to his lips. Automatically, he opens his mouth, closing his lips around it and flicking his tongue at it. There’s an odd taste to it, woody and distantly familiar. Faintly sour and bamboo-like in its taste, but he’s not quite sure. “Drink, Sakumo. I don’t trust you to drink from a canteen properly, so this will have to do for now.”

He ignores the odd taste—it’s not as if he hasn’t had worse—and instead drinks from the impromptu-straw. Lukewarm water wets his lips and soothes the stinging in his throat, and after a few slow slips, he lets the straw slip from his mouth, licking his lips in an attempt to get the odd taste out of his mouth.

“Ugh,” he whines, too tired to get his mouth to cooperate properly. And just to make sure Orochimaru heard it, he repeats it, “Ugh…”

He’s lowered carefully to the ground, onto his side, and his head is rested upon something soft and somewhat thick.

A cool hand sweeps over his back, followed closely by a chakra that is cold, dark, and dangerous—but comfortingly so, as contradictory as that sounds. Perhaps it’s odd (he hasn’t exactly heard good things about Orochimaru’s chakra), but the feeling of the chakra against his skin isn’t actually unpleasant.

It’s the cold of a refreshing breeze on a hot summer day, the restful dark of night after a long day. It coils around him protectively, reaffirming its presence with its heaviness and reassuring him he’s safe with its threatening aura. It’s dangerous, but only towards enemies (never towards him), and it’s hard to find a chakra signature like that intimidating.

It’s…well, it’s Orochimaru’s in the end, and Sakumo finds it just as reassuring a presence as Orochimaru himself (it’s comforting, in the same way). It settles over him like a living, overprotective blanket, washing away his pain and discomfort, and he smiles.

Sakumo falls asleep just like that.

*

Orochimaru sits back on his heels with a soft exhale, legs folded beneath him in proper seiza and resting his hands in his lap. Kusa’s forests are thick, most of them with trees stretching high into the sky, but the forest they are in right now—only a few kilometers from the battlefield—doesn’t quite provide the same amount of cover. As a result, while the trees are still fairly tall, he can still see (and feel) the warmth of the sun. There’s golden light dappled on the grass forest floor, soft and beautiful and warm, sunlight filtering through leaves, and it reminds him—

Of his garden. His garden, the garden his parents (his mother in particular) entrusted him with despite the fact that it was brimming with poisonous plants and venomous animals. The garden he spent most of his childhood in, not just tending to but also simply enjoying. And he remembers that, on the eastern side of the garden, past waist-high flowers of purple aconite and white baneberry, there was a small cluster of trees. Five of them, far from fully grown—only seven meters tall, when they’re usually twice that, but they were manchineel trees, every fiber of them brimming with danger and poison, and he loved them for it. They formed something of a clearing between them, and sprouting amidst blades of grass were spots of pink-purple corn cockle, bulbs of white amianthium, and flowers of yellow metel. 

It was a clearing that would undeniably at least be life-threatening to any other person, but Orochimaru has always been protected by his clan’s bloodline. Poison, at the very least, has never been something he’s had to fear, which is why he’s never hesitated to stretch himself across grass and poisoned herbs alike, shaded by trees dripping with poisonous sap. Or why he’s never hesitated to pluck one of the apple-like fruit of the manchineel, to turn it in his hands and bite into it, sweet poison flooding his mouth and his chakra erasing any damage or pain before it even exists. Or why, although the very air around a manchineel tree scents of poison and sweet acid, he’s never hesitated to slumber, surrounded by five of them, with danger pillowing his head and giving him shade.

It was his favorite napping place for the trees. They provided him shade but not so much shade that the sunlight couldn’t reach him, and it always left him languid and sleepy from the warmth, on the brink of never moving. It had always been a beautiful sight, too, the way the sunlight filtered through the leaves.

 _Komorebi,_ as his mother called it, on one of the few days that she spent entirely at home. Neither of them had any responsibilities, and they passed the entire day, sunrise to moonrise, together at home. From noon to evening, they wandered through and tended to the garden, occasionally pausing for short naps beneath the manchineel trees. Near the evening, his father joined them in enjoying the tranquil beauty of the nature around them, and—

(And then the day was over, and they had to restart their duties—training for him, missions for them—and eventually there came missions where first his father and then his mother had chosen to leave him behind)

And now, here he is, half a week’s travel from Konoha, gazing at dappled patches of liquid gold. He lifts a hand briefly, watching through half-lidded eyes as sunshine slips between his fingers and turns pale skin golden and warm, before he lets it drop.

It’s been a long time since he’s been able to relax like this.

 _Komorebi,_ he thinks, but it’s in his mother’s voice this time, soft and sweet and filled with a quiet sort of awe. It’s a pretty word, impossibly beautiful, and balances the wintry chill of the air with sunshine warmth.

He reaches out with his chakra, counting off the chakra signatures around him—Sakumo, Rei, Seia, a bird high above them, a squirrel a few meters to the left, his summons patrolling, scattered within a half-kilometer’s radius—and, reassured, lets himself tip sideways out of seiza into a controlled fall. 

He stretches himself out across the forest floor, not even half a meter away from Sakumo. From high above, the sun winks at him from high above, half-hidden behind a stray branch, and in his peripheral vision he can see the white of Sakumo’s hair. There are soft, almost inaudible giggles from Rei, and Seia is like a beacon in his senses, bright and close and present.

He drifts off with calculations and plans running through his mind.

_His chakra network has already healed, so he has nothing to complain about there. Control exercises first, as they don’t take much chakra to use, and his chakra is still being used to heal his own body. I’ll continue testing him on the medicinal uses of herbs and the theories behind medical ninjutsu. Airi can hunt a fish in the river for the test; she hasn’t gone swimming in a while. And the nestlings can challenge themselves with bringing live prey to us for healing practice after that. Multiple control exercises at once for Sakumo, then. I’ll set up some snares or go hunting later so we don’t need to eat ration bars anymore, and if his summons don’t show up, I’ll have Shiroyuki track them. A multi-layered genjutsu around the area if Sakumo isn’t well enough to be moved within the next few days, and then I’ll need to find the rest of the herbs needed to complete that burn salve Tsunade told me about once, and then—_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also known as the one about sleeping and waking up because I was utterly exhausted when writing the majority of this chapter.
> 
> Poor Oro; he's still utterly exhausted and basically experiencing jetlag and constant exhaustion and still has a million things to do ~~like me~~ :(
> 
> "Komorebi" is one of my new favorite words. It's oddly specific--referring to sunlight filtering through leaves, but I really love it so I included it in this chapter.
> 
> I also elaborated more on Orochimaru's garden ^w^ forgive me for bombarding you with my headcanons, but I really like worldbuilding. Manchineel trees are some of the most poisonous trees in existence (not plant, though. Tree) and are found a lot in Florida. Their fruit looks like apples and is really sweet but causes blistering and intense pain and may cause death. Their tree sap is also poisonous. Orochimaru's bloodline limit (in my headcanons) is immunity to most toxic chemicals so he's not negatively affected by the poison, but he still can tell that it exists.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	19. the confrontation(s)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Please note that this is the second chapter of a double update. It has been split into 2 chapters because it feels better that way, but I haven't updated before this because I felt like they were better read together.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Please enjoy.

“Kohebi, could you come here for a little bit?” his mother’s voice drifts through the halls of their home. 

It’s soft and mildly amused, a sweet sound that rings high and clear although it’s not above normal or conversational volume. In his bedroom, Orochimaru pauses in his game of go with Karu (they’re equally matched for now, but Orochimaru’s pretty sure that the summons is going to win. Karu’s much older and much more experienced than him, after all, and Orochimaru hasn’t won once against the snake before), small fingers still hovering over his next piece, and looks up.

“Yes, Okaa-chan,” he calls back automatically. Karu doesn’t stir from where he’s coiled up on a blanket folded on the ground, perfectly catching the sunlight streaming through the open window. Wise dark eyes gaze back at him unblinkingly, and Orochimaru leans forward to brush his fingertips against Karu’s side. “You’ll continue playing with me later, Karu?” he asks solemnly.

The red-scaled summons flicks his tongue out, “Of course, kohebi,” and Orochimaru flushes slightly because _that’s just what Okaa-chan calls me; I’m not **that** small anymore; I’m almost a meter tall now—_ but in comparison to Karu, who is at least five times his height and just as many times old, Orochimaru _is_ still a nestling, so he swallows down the protests and settles for an eye-roll before he rises, smoothing out the wrinkles in his casual kimono, and hurries into the hallway.

Okaa-chan is standing at the entrance to the garden, with both the shoji sliding panels and amado storm shutters open. She turns around as he approaches, a soft smile on her lips.

The outside air is cool, Orochimaru notes as he stops by her side. He peers outside curiously, not sure what fascinated Okaa-chan enough that she would interrupt his game with Karu. Sunlight falls across the flora before them, bathing them in golden hues, but autumn gives a crisp bite to the air that summer would not have.

“Okaa-chan?” he asks, voice quiet and high as he looks up at her.

She glances down, eyes soft and content, “It’s been a long time since we last went koyo viewing. Winter is coming soon. Would you like to go for a walk with me, kohebi?”

Konoha’s leaves are beautiful in autumn, and he has the time. Reaching up, he slips his hand into his mother’s and nods solemnly. Her answering smile is soft but bright, and her other hand shuts the shoji doors to the backyard easily. The amado shutters outside the house are left open, as they have been since the last rainfall, the cover their thick wooden frames provide from storms unnecessary. They’d block out the sunlight, anyways, which would leave the tatami mats colder than Orochimaru’s bare feet would like. 

His mother tugs him along to their entrance hall, feet silent against the tatami mats. Together, they slip on their sandals and amble off into the woods around their home, taking their time as they observe the multi-colored leaves falling and dancing through the air, twirling around each other and the wind.

It’s the last time he ever goes koyo-viewing with her. 

He is five.

*

Something small and cold presses at his cheek, gently but insistently nudging him awake.

Orochimaru gives a sleepy mumble, rolling over onto his other side so he doesn’t have to deal with it, and there’s a huff akin to laughter before the prodding resumes, this time on the back of his neck. He twitches—he has the feeling he doesn’t have pressing responsibilities today (and he’s always right on that count), and the sun is pleasantly warm against his skin. The coldness tickling his nape doesn’t seem like it will stop any time soon, however, so he reluctantly starts to drag himself from sleep’s strong grasps. 

Still grumbling incoherently under his breath (and already planning on being as unhelpful as humanly possible), he cracks his eyes open, blinking languidly and opening them wider with each blink. He’s halfway through a mumbled “What is it, Okaa-chan?” before he registers the foreign sight of the tree trunks in front of him. They stretch on as far as he can see, thick and dark, but they’re too unfamiliar to be a part of the woods by his house, which he passes through every day.

It’s more reflex than actual thought that has him kicking up off the ground. He lands on his feet, automatically leaping back even as he makes a mid-air turn, hands already flying through jutsu signs, and—

A large black wolf stares back at him meters away, clearly unimpressed, and Orochimaru stops in his movements as his mind catches up to him, absent-mindedly landing in a crouch on a stray tree branch.

“Oh, it’s you,” he rolls his eyes and lets the gathered chakra dissipate back into nothing. The suddenly gaping emptiness inside him is pushed away with an ease borne from years of practice (his family has been dead for years now; it’s ridiculous that he’s forgotten that), and his expression returns to its default state of disinterest as he straightens, leaning against the tree. The slightest tilt of his head upwards and away gives his apathy a veneer of disdain as he comments off-handedly, “If you left tracks and someone finds us, I’ll skin you and gut you myself.”

The mild tone of voice and the hint of condescension on his features (the implied _it wouldn’t be very difficult_ ) do as he intended. The wolf growls in response, low and irritated from the back of its throat, and Orochimaru smirks down at it. A small leap and a controlled fall have him on the forest floor beside Sakumo, legs carelessly crossed. Absently, he notes Seia coiled by a sleeping Rei behind a tree a few meters away, several of his summons keeping watch at a distance, and Airi quietly approaching him.

She halts right in front of him, thick coils of golden and white trailing behind her as she periscopes until her eyes are level with his own, and he automatically lifts a hand to brush fondly against her scales.

“Is the wolf bothering you, Orochimaru-sama?” she asks solemnly, not moving into his touch but not moving away from it either. “I can kill it for you if you’d like.”

She’s always been one of his most serious serpents, even as a nestling (unlike the large majority of his summons, he finds himself thinking dryly. As fond of them as he is, they are utterly ridiculous at the best of times, regardless of their age). Also unlike the majority of his summons, she doesn’t tend to play with her prey, though he’s not particularly surprised by that. Although she still has the potential to grow more, she has only just grown to be five meters long, too small to efficiently corner her prey, and while she strikes fast, she doesn’t cover ground anywhere near as fast as Himeko or any of his larger serpents. She prefers ambushes to hunts, for that reason, but she rarely hesitates in full-on attacks, especially at close range. Already, she is low to the ground, coiling into herself, parallel to the forest floor and inching forward, ready to strike. The wolf watches her warily, not moving but baring its teeth in warning.

His lips curl into a half-smirk that is equal measures amusement and fondness, “No, it’s fine, Airi.” He rests his hand on smooth scales, gently rubbing with the pads of his fingers, “Leave him be. Did you come to report to me?”

She looks faintly dissatisfied, tongue flicking out to taste the air, but obediently settles out of her striking position, staying coiled on the ground. Vigilant, but no longer quite as threatening, she shifts her attention from the wolf to him, “Yes, Orochimaru-sama. The forest is clear of the shinobi except at the perimeter closest to the battlefield; Sanhai is keeping an eye on that section and luring enemy shinobi astray. Ryuumaru is picking them off, and Kasumi has successfully infiltrated the Iwagakure camp. Fubuki and Eiji are circling the area here, and Nami is guarding the area between their patrol and the battlefield. Shiroyuki is watching the entire forest along Nami’s route. He tracked two non-hostile chakra signatures moving towards your area, so I left my guarding position to Nami.”

Orochimaru hums, inclining his head in acknowledgement, then slides his eyes over to Takeshi, “Your partner, I presume?”

A low rumble, “No thanks to you, but yes.”

He shrugs carelessly and leans back on his palms, tipping his head backwards to catch the sunlight on his face. It bathes his head and neck in warmth and his eyelids in red, and he feels himself going languid and boneless in content.

“…I wasn’t worried,” he eventually drawls out, when he feels like the wolf has waited long enough for a response. It’s not an explanation or even anything vaguely resembling an apology, and the summons growls. “Summons are generally more resilient than humans, and Sakumo was my priority. Your partner could have easily dismissed himself in the smoke, anyways. Unless you’re implying that the wolf summons have inferior medical treatments?”

It’s not really an insult; he’s feeling too lazy to inject as much bite as he could have into the words. It’s more an offhand comment, an idle question with a hint of derision to it. The wolf snarls at him anyways, cold and furious and completely of no concern to Orochimaru.

The words are tuned out with practiced ease—the summons has nothing on Jiraiya, and Orochimaru has suffered through years as the object of Jiraiya’s “fond” attentions (Jiraiya is inhumanly obnoxious. It’s a miracle no one has managed to murder the oaf yet; heavens know Orochimaru would have done so years ago if he’d known how troublesome his teammate would be).

It’s not arrogance that has Orochimaru at ease around the summons (not completely, at least). He’s fully aware of the possible danger the wolf poses, but…well. There are very few beings in this world who could overpower him, finely honed reflexes or not, and a summons—even one as trained as Sakumo’s is—has no chance of catching him off guard.

(Besides, Seia and Airi are lingering only just out of reach. While they may not cover ground as fast as Himeko or even Saito who have meters upon meters of muscles and coils, his smaller summons strike at speeds even trained shinobi would be hard-pressed to react to. Instinct and reflexes are perhaps the only thing that would save the wolf from a messy death, so Orochimaru…honestly probably wouldn’t even have to move in response to an attack despite the proximity of the wolf to him, as his serpents would take care of the problem for him. Not that he’d let them kill the animal, of course—Sakumo wouldn’t be pleased with that, he’d imagine—but he wouldn’t deny them their pleasures. There’s little enough found of those in the present situation, after all)

A different chakra signature (one he’s been tracking since he woke up, even subconsciously) finally moves in from where it’s been warily circling the area. It passes directly under Eiji on its way over, and Orochimaru hums low in his throat as it approaches rapidly.

“Sakumo isn’t ready to be moved yet,” he cuts through the tirade. It’s carelessly, easily spoken, neither an insult nor a rebuttal, but there’s a pause in both voice and movement around him as they register his statement. He drags himself upright reluctantly, pulling his legs in and hooking an elbow around one upright knee, the other leg straight against the mixed grass and dirt. Humorless golden eyes meet amber-brown as Orochimaru repeats, “Sakumo isn’t ready to be moved yet. Hence why, if either of you left tracks that could be followed,” he lets gravity tug him downward, tilting his head to the side and sweeping his legs, both covered with a thin film of chakra, over his shoulder and landing upright in a crouch, hair falling around him, “I will skin and gut the both of you myself,” he finishes, a dark smile on his face as he stares, right eye twitching, at the tangle of silver and black limbs and fur in front of him.

There’s a snarl, low and guttural and very much so not-human, from the writhing mass, “You bastard, you didn’t have to kick me so hard—oi, Takeshi, _get your stinking furry arse off of me_ —”

“My parents were married, thank you very much,” Orochimaru can feel his smile stretching into something resembling more a baring of teeth than any sort of friendly overture. “And I’d rather not have my throat torn out. It was simply a coincidence that you had to continue moving into my legs. I’ve heard losing weight can improve agility, though. Perhaps you’d like some help with that? I have some experience with gastrectomy, if you’re interested.”

He’s definitely baring his teeth now. Granted, the silver wolf that has finally managed to untangle himself from his partner is baring his fangs right back, but both summons look decidedly discontent with the Killing Intent Orochimaru is deliberately emanating along with the likely deranged look on his face (complete with an eye that is twitching just along his waterline, which happens to be fast advancing from an annoyance to a reason for murder).

The reason for his irritation bristles but eyes him warily as he bites out, “No thanks; I wouldn’t want to risk your hand _slipping_ and have you remove all of my stomach along with the rest of the organs in the vicinity.”

“Oh? What a shame; I would’ve thought such a state an improvement for a being like you. After all, you’d no longer be a waste of chakra, effort, _air_ —”

Off to the side, Sakumo rolls over onto his stomach, pillowing his head in his arms and humming lowly.

Orochimaru’s mouth shuts with an audible click, and he sends a frigid glare at both of the wolves before he rises fluidly, shaking the sleeves of his kimono (having decided it was too cold for a yukata outside of battle situations) free of dust before making his way over to Sakumo. Seia’s neck and head appear around the trunk of a tree questioningly, but he shakes his head in a minute, sharp movement. Rei has done all she can to help Sakumo, and Orochimaru is perfectly capable of monitoring and healing Sakumo for the remainder of his recovery. Satisfied, his summons withdraws (no doubt to continue watching over Rei), and Orochimaru sinks gracefully to the ground besides Sakumo, settling both hands on his prone body and closing his eyes as chakra rushes between them.

It’s not medical chakra, so it doesn’t do much beyond informing Orochimaru of the condition of Sakumo’s chakra system and organs. Sakumo is stirring beneath his hands, no doubt alerted to the non-hostile but still foreign chakra in his body, so Orochimaru goes through the compiled information one last time—mostly healed tissue along the ear canals and eardrums (though he can’t say anything for Sakumo’s inner ears), skin slowly regrowing in his back, no sign of infection or long-lasting damage anywhere—and withdraws his chakra, temporarily satisfied. Far from content (he won’t be content until Sakumo is fully healed and this war is over with), but he’ll take what he can have in the meantime.

Through strands of silvery-white, Orochimaru watches one slate-gray eye slowly slide open. Another hum, low and sleepy, and Sakumo turns his head outward, eyes trailing up Orochimaru’s form. For a moment, Sakumo simply gazes up at him, eyes sleepy and relaxed, and then he smiles up at him, calm and somewhat dreamy.

“Oro,” he greets, voice low from sleepy but startlingly lucid. “I should probably,” he breaks off to yawn, turning his head back into his arms, and repeats, voice slightly muffled, “I should probably be worried for myself, shouldn’t I?”

Orochimaru opens his mouth automatically to respond, but—

Halts.

 _Yes,_ is what he was planning on saying. He’s had plenty of time to think up a scathing lecture for Sakumo, one that would hopefully deter any more reckless actions and remind his idiot student to actually keep an eye on his surroundings and think before acting. _At least you’re capable of realizing that much. I warned you about the Explosion Corps, didn’t I? What’s the point of telling you anything if you don’t listen? Or, on that note, of training you if you don’t think? Those who are strong don’t need to worry quite so much, but they only lived long enough to become strong by surviving. If you don’t think your actions through, if you don’t care enough about your own wellbeing to stay focused on surviving, I may as well give up on you now. I didn’t spend so much time and effort training you for you to become one of the nameless dead lying on the field, for you to become an example in history, a mistake to be learned from_ , but—

“You don’t sound very worried,” is what comes out of his mouth. 

There’s an odd, almost distracted, tone to his words, and he knows Sakumo hears it when the other man pushes himself up onto an elbow, the earlier peacefulness to his features gone and replaced with concern and uncertainty.

“Because I’m not…?” Sakumo answers slowly, a little hesitantly, brows furrowed as he studies Orochimaru’s features. “I mean, I know you’ll probably run me into the ground and then some, but while you tend to push me past my limits, you’re always careful to make sure I don’t overexert myself beyond repair. It’s not like I don’t deserve it either—you warned me, but I was an idiot and didn’t listen to you. And I’ll come out all the better for it, so I really don’t have much of an actual reason to worry.”

Orochimaru _stares_ , unable to think of a response, and Sakumo frowns a little more acutely.

“Is it that surprising that I trust you? I wouldn’t have let you train me if I didn’t trust you to watch out for my best interests, and I definitely wouldn’t have let you anywhere near Kakashi if I didn’t trust you to take care of him.”

“I…” Orochimaru shakes his head sharply, snapping himself out of his frozen state. “No, I knew. I simply hadn’t realized—” _that you knew so much about the way I was training you, how much you actually trusted me, how much I actually **cared**_ “—how mature your mindset was when you have all the self-control of a genin with a full pack of exploding tags.”

Sakumo laughs sheepishly, the worry on his face easing, “We’ve all been there. My jounin sensei was pissed when he found the three of us playing around with his extra supplies. We destroyed most of the training ground and had to fix it ourselves. It took us half a week to fill up all the holes, I think, and they took the money to replace the exploding tags and training posts out of the payment for our next mission.”

Orochimaru smirks, “Jiraiya, Tsunade, and I were already fairly skilled at seals by the time we graduated the Academy. We made the exploding tags ourselves, with varying results.”

“Because of the different writing styles?” Sakumo guesses, and Orochimaru nods approvingly.

“Correct. As you should know, there are five main calligraphy scripts: tensho, reisho, gyousho, sousho, and kaisho. Tensho resembles art and pictures more than actual strokes. Reisho is the clerical and official script, and gyousho is a more flowing version of it. Sousho is even more flowing than gyousho and usually results in artistically messy writing. Kaisho, of course, is the standard script. All seals masters know at least tensho, reisho, and sousho, as seals interact with different scripts in different ways. It’s best to know all of them, of course, but the clerical and standard scripts, reisho and kaisho, are similar enough that reisho can substitute for kaisho. Likewise with the semi-cursive and cursive scripts, sousho and gyousho. The seals won’t work quite as well, but in almost all cases, they will still function in the same manner.”

“Exploding tags have two different sealing scripts in them, don’t they?” Sakumo muses. “Kaisho for the central kanji, I think, and sousho for the details?”

Orochimaru tilts his head in thought, “Kaisho can work, but reisho is the best. The central kanji is ‘爆,’ read ‘baku’ for ‘explode.’ Writing it in reisho provides a more solid foundation for the seal, which means that there will be less error in performing the specifications of the explosion. You are not incorrect, however; the mass-produced seals tend to use kaisho to lessen the production expenses.”

“Because many more people know the standard script than the clerical script,” Sakumo realizes.

“Yes,” the Sannin agrees, pleased that Sakumo is keeping up. “They hire calligraphers for the specifications of the seal, but they employ ordinary workers for the central kanji. Very few people have handwriting too sloppy to pass for kaisho, so it’s a viable occupation for even civilians. Reisho, on the other hand, is, outside of calligraphy, usually only taught to members of noble families or major clans, most of whom do not have time to spare for such a mundane job. It’s much cheaper to hire a calligrapher solely for the writing around the central kanji, which is already fairly expensive, and then to employ a worker, at a much lower cost, to write the central kanji in kaisho. The writing around the central kanji specifies the details of the explosion—the intensity, noise, and contents, among other things. They are written in sousho to reflect the speed at which the seal, once activated, should detonate and follow the specifications. It helps that sousho is a much faster script than other styles,” he adds, voice dryly amused, “so an experienced calligrapher can prepare an entire pack of explosive tags in a little over an hour. They are paid quite well for their time.”

“Speaking from experience, are you?” Sakumo grins.

“Somewhat,” he agrees with a faint smirk on his face. “Jiraiya took a few of those jobs when he was looking for extra money. They went very well, mostly because he wrote solely in the sousho script. Actually, when we were first creating explosive tags, his tags either detonated immediately or didn’t detonate at all—he could hardly even write something resembling gyousho, so the seal didn’t react well to his attempts at writing kaisho.”

Sakumo laughs, and Orochimaru nods, smirking, “As for Tsunade’s, hers didn’t work at all at first either because she only wrote in the reisho script. They ended up exploding about an hour after she first wrote them, startling all of us in the process.”

After a beat, Sakumo tilts his head slightly, smile amused, “And yours?”

Orochimaru’s smirk widens, “Unlike Jiraiya, I didn’t have terrible handwriting, so I didn’t learn the sousho script, which is artistically messy. And my clan wasn’t one of the major clans like the Senju, so I had no need to learn the official reisho script. My parents taught me calligraphy in the gyousho script, which can passably replace sousho, and of course I knew kaisho. My tags worked fairly well, though they took a few minutes to detonate and the explosions varied from barely large enough to scorch the earth to starting miniature fires. They were furious with me until they decided to join forces against me. Jiraiya wrote the sousho, Tsunade the reisho, and we proceeded to set fire to the area around our training ground, utterly destroying our first and carrying our fight to the two others in the vicinity.”

“You used ninjutsu to cheat, didn’t you?” Sakumo grins slyly.

Orochimaru sniffs, pointedly doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t fight the smile tugging at his lips as Sakumo falls back onto the ground, eyes closed as he laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orochimaru is a really good teacher, and Sakumo makes an amazing student because he's so engaged. I love these guys, I really do <3 ~~i just love torturing them more~~
> 
> So Orochimaru finally gets to butt heads with the wolves, and Sakumo is so ridiculously trusting that he actually gets out of Oro's planned mean lecture (without even intending to, ugh, I wish I had his skills)
> 
> Bombarding you with more headcanons! *sprinkles sparkles over you in hopes of making you forget my unintended month-long hiatus* I'm actually really into Uzushio and sealing and all that stuff and I have literally hundreds of headcanons just waiting to shove themselves into my story.
> 
> On calligraphy: I only dabble in calligraphy, but my teacher knows all 5 styles: tensho, reisho, gyousho, sousho, and kaisho. They're called differently in every language, but in English they're most often translated as "seal script" "clerical/official script" "semi-cursive script" "cursive/sloppy script" and "standard script." Search them up--they're really cool! Tensho looks kind of like Korean characters more than kanji/Chinese characters, and reisho is kinda a more solid and neat version of kaisho. Sousho can get really messy; it's kinda like messy handwriting and cursive mixed together into artistically messy. Gyousho is a little more flowy/messy than kaisho/reisho, but not quite as much as sousho.
> 
> I have a lot of sealing headcanons. And Uzushio headcanons. And also the headcanon that Konoha genin are basically pyromaniacs in the making and literally every genin team has gone to town with exploding tags at _least_ once.
> 
> On my hiatus: I deeply apologize. I've been having a very rough time lately. A lot of RL problems just slammed right into me, and then I was struggling with writing (both not wanting to and hating what I wrote). I'm trying to avoid that happening again, but I hope that these 2 chapters (Chapter 18 is 2.8k, Chapter 19 (this one) is 4k) and their combined length of nearly 7k can make up for the long wait.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	20. the moment of realization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you dead from the slow burn yet? (◕ω◕ ✿) 
> 
> Please enjoy.

“Ne, what are you doing?” Sakumo asks idly, lying on his front with his head pillowed on his arms.

Orochimaru doesn’t look up from where he is deftly sorting through an array of plants a meter or so away, but there’s an amused tone to his words as he responds, “What do you think I am doing?” Slim fingers set down the sprig of leaves the Sannin was examining earlier and skim across the selection of greens, one flowing sleeve following. They settle on a small plant that is wholly undamaged (leaves, flowers, vertical and horizontal roots and all) and delicately wrap around the horizontal root, and Orochimaru extends it towards Sakumo with one hand cradling the plant, attention already returning to the others as he absent-mindedly asks, “Do you recognize this herb?”

Sakumo eyes it consideringly, not shifting from the ground (he’s comfortable as he is, thank you). Its leaves are mostly rounded, a lighter green in color, and he can see that its veins are parallel beneath the sunlight. It’s flowering too, tiny white buds at the top of its many flower spikes, and its roots are long, straight and oddly yellow-ish in color. He tries to remember if he recognizes it for a few moments more—it seems vaguely familiar to him—but in the end,

“Not really,” he admits. “It does look familiar though. I might have encountered it in my garden or something.”

Orochimaru pauses in his movements and carefully pronounces, as if reminded of something supremely unpleasant, “Ah, yes. Your… _garden_.”

Sakumo laughs at the audible distaste in his tone and shifts slightly to free one arm. He carefully takes the plant from the other’s unresisting grasp, bringing it closer to his eyes.

“My garden,” he agrees easily, turning the herb to examine it from different angles. “Is there something wrong with it? I thought it was fine.”

Orochimaru glances sidelong at him, expression so incredibly unamused that Sakumo can’t help but laugh again, “Your garden, Hatake—”

“Ooh, back to the surnames, I see,” Sakumo grins cheekily at Orochimaru, who determinedly ignores him.

“ _Your garden, Hatake,_ ” Orochimaru repeats, glaring at him and purposefully articulating every syllable, “is a mess.”

“It is _not_!” Sakumo protests automatically, but then he remembers what his garden actually looks like and reconsiders. “Well, not really. I mean, I don’t really grow anything there, so it’s mostly just weeds and a few other stuff, but weeds don’t really clutter anything up, so there’s not much reason to cut them!” 

Orochimaru pointedly raises an eyebrow, and Sakumo flushes, “ _That was one time!_ ”

“Oh yes,” Orochimaru says, dryly and completely insincerely. “Definitely. Tripping over weeds and stabbing yourself with your sword is most assuredly not any cause for concern whatsoever, is that right?”

“ _It was my foot, not a vital area,_ ” Sakumo hisses out, propping himself up on one elbow. “And I cut the weeds right after!”

“With your sword,” Orochimaru nods sagely, voice even and completely at odds with the smirk on his face. “When you couldn’t walk for days because you’d shattered several of the bones in your foot and dragged yourself out into the garden to take out your anger on the plants.”

“You were the one who wouldn’t heal me,” he sulks.

It had been an unpleasant few days, relearning how to walk and balance on only one leg. On the bright side, if he ever injures a leg or foot again, he at least knows how to hop away with adequate speed and silence.

“You were an idiot,” Orochimaru returns primly, and Sakumo resists the urge to roll his eyes because Orochimaru says that literally every time he sees him even though it’s not like Sakumo couldn’t hold his own in a fair spar with Orochimaru (he says fair because, as he’s learned, Orochimaru is particularly fond of using a few jutsu before the fight to stack his deck and, beyond that, is overall very good at screwing with Sakumo’s mind). “And I healed you twice, if I recall correct. Once immediately, to make sure you wouldn’t die from blood loss or infection, and then I healed you fully after four days. You learned your lesson from that experience, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles. “Keep your surroundings clear or keep an eye on your surroundings, you’ve said it to me at least twenty times now, blah blah.” Orochimaru’s eye twitches, and Sakumo hastily changes the subject, “So, uh, back to the plant—I said I thought I might have seen it somewhere before?”

“Yes,” Orochimaru allows. There is a long-suffering look on his face as if he’s despairing of Sakumo’s lack of subtlety (Sakumo privately thinks that given how often he wears that expression around Sakumo, Orochimaru’s face might be stuck like that one day. He’s smart enough not to say so, though). One arm reaches out and delicately lifts the plant from Sakumo’s loose grip as Orochimaru elaborates, “It’s plantain. An anti-inflammatory herb you should have remembered from your studying.”

“Hahaha,” Sakumo laughs, nervously eying the look on Orochimaru’s face. “Um. Oops?”

There is a long-suffering sigh but surprisingly no mocking (probably because he’s injured. Orochimaru’s nice like that), “You seemed to have no trouble memorizing it when you first learned it, and yet you forget it in two days?”

“Cramming skills come in handy sometimes,” he answers cheerfully.

He’d always been good at memorizing things for short periods of times—mission scrolls, faces, names—it was just that he forgot them really quickly if he didn’t review them often.

“You are utterly ridiculous,” Orochimaru says, and Sakumo just smiles at him until the dark-haired man rolls his eyes. “I suppose we can skip the remaining theory and move on to the practical applications of the herbs you studied. As I said, plantain is an anti-inflammatory herb. It’s also a common weed, so it’s not unlikely that you would have encountered it in your mess of a garden. Its leaves can be chewed and applied directly to the skin as a paste, or otherwise used with other herbs and liquids to make a poultice.”

“…Are you really going to eat that?” Sakumo stares incredulously at Orochimaru. “That doesn’t exactly look…you know,” he waves a hand, “ _appetizing_ or anything.”

He gets a flat stare in response, “I assure you, while its taste does leave something to be desired, plantain is extremely effective in cases where chakra cannot be used externally for healing. And it’s usually chewed, as I said, not swallowed.” Sakumo smiles sheepishly and gets another long-suffering look before Orochimaru continues, “At any rate, it won’t be going into my mouth—I’m mixing it into a poultice, which is another one of the ways it can be used, along with several other herbs to heal you faster.”

“You didn’t do this last time,” Sakumo muses.

“No,” Orochimaru turns his eyes back towards the plants and starts picking through them again. “Last time, I chose not to help your healing process beyond initial and final healings. This time, it is not of my own choice that I have not healed you fully. The burns on your back are caused partially by fire and partially by the chakra entering your body and embedding itself within your system. While the foreign chakra has been removed, your chakra system is still in a fragile state. A professional healer could possibly restore you to fighting condition from your current state, but I don’t want to risk a chakra imbalance or anything similar occurring within you. Your back will be healing naturally; the poultices and herbs are simply to help you along.”

“…” Sakumo says in response, because while Sakumo has gotten a lot of practice in translating from Orochimaru-speak to everyday language over the past half-year, his brain is really not feeling up to any higher functions right now.

Orochimaru glances at him from the corner of his eyes, clan markings a sweep of purple from his brow down his nose, and snorts softly in amusement at his obvious confusion, “In short, the herbs are to help your healing along. Using medical chakra to actively heal you could be dangerous since your chakra system was only recently healed and I do not have enough knowledge about the injury itself or the method of healing. If your chakra deems mine an enemy, it might choose to focus on expelling that chakra, much like you would a genjutsu, instead of its current tasks. Since it is currently working to keep you alive, repair its system, and repair your body, if that happens, you could potentially die.”

“…Yeah, that makes sense,” Sakumo admits after running that through his mind one more time.

“You didn’t pay very much attention in the Academy classes, did you?” there’s a smirk in the other’s voice.

“I probably should have, but no, I didn’t,” he brushes his hair behind his ear, absently noting that there are a few parts that are clearly thinner or shorter than he last remembers. He offers a completely unapologetic grin to the aura of resignation Orochimaru is radiating. “The teacher went faster than I cared to follow, and since the theory classes didn’t matter as much as the practical classes, I just brought something else to do. I think the only theory classes I actually paid attention to after the first day were the monthly emergency first aid classes and that one sealing class, but the teacher never really cared unless we were failing really badly.”

“They were rushing to fill up the ranks again,” Orochimaru hums in response, and there’s something dark and bitter beneath the careful neutrality to his voice, and Sakumo doesn’t respond, only turns his gaze downwards and fiddles with the grass and wildflowers between his fingers.

What can he say? It’s true.

(It’s always true)

The teachers at the Academy hadn’t particularly cared for their students. With good reason, too—even though they had measures in place to prevent those completely unprepared for the shinobi lifestyle, half of Sakumo’s graduating class died at genin. The rest of them made it to chuunin, some to jounin, but he can count on one hand the number of surviving shinobi around his age. Hiro (quiet, shy) and Aiko (pessimistic) are chuunin, Miyuko (distant but amicable for an Uchiha) is a tokubetsu jounin, and then there’s Dai at genin and himself at jounin.

There were over a hundred students in Sakumo’s year (possibly two hundred, but he hasn’t thought of them in far too long). Most of them were orphans whose parents died in the First War, but after the Second, a few months into the Third, most of them are dead. There are only five of them left (or maybe not even that. They could have died in the half-year since he’s last seen them).

Orochimaru’s year probably felt the rush to graduate more genin even more keenly. They came a few more years into the war, when Konoha was starting to reach for more forces. The Second War came too soon after the First (they’d called it the Great War, the one that would be spoken of with respect and fear, until the Second War. Now, it’s only the First, the first of three wars, and hopefully no more), and the village was just starting to feel the slow but steady drain as more and more skilled shinobi were lost. 

Compared to the other Hidden Villages, Konoha was fairly kind to her children—the Academy training was intense but thoroughly taught them basic survival skills, and genin usually didn’t actually step foot on the battlefields, delivering to the camps at the edges and letting other shinobi transfer supplies forward (or, if they did actually need to deliver to the field medics, it was usually with an accompanying chuunin or another genin team).

And yet, of those who graduated from Orochimaru’s class, only the Sannin remain. Three admittedly exceptional shinobi from a class of well over a hundred students who were unprepared for war. And—

There’s a history of darkness to Konoha that makes Sakumo ache every time he thinks about it. This is why he can’t argue against Orochimaru, can never bring himself to voice the question of _why did you do what you did to Konoha_ even when it’s on his lips, because he knows. He _knows_ because Sakumo’s clan was utterly annihilated fighting in defense of Konoha, the last of them killed, in the Second War, and it felt like he’d lost everything when he’d received notice that his last remaining relative (her name was Yume, and she could make a feast out of the things growing in the forest—roots, nuts, berries, and sap, amongst other things. She taught him what her favorites smelled like, which plants to avoid, and the best ways to move through the trees, and she was half an aunt and half a cousin, and she’d never brushed him off when he hugged her and asked her to come back safe).

And maybe Orochimaru never had that experience—of being in a clan of twenty (more that he’s forgotten), of being raised with wolves, of being buried beneath a pile of human and wolf alike—to miss, but he lost all that he had ever known to be family, and that’s something that is always devastating. Those experiments could have been driven by anything, from a genuine desire to help Konoha’s forces to a need for consistency and analysis and distance from reality, but what matters more to Sakumo is not what Orochimaru was like then but how he is now.

There’s an odd dichotomy to be found, in reconciling the Orochimaru he thought he knew—who was immoral, apathetic, and mocking, with the power to back it up—and Orochimaru right now, who doesn’t like to pretend to be something he’s not, who is unashamed of either himself or his skills, who is currently calm and has a very, very well-hidden undercurrent of bitterness and incomprehension beneath his words.

Sakumo sighs and drops his head back onto his arms, turning his neck to continue watching Orochimaru. The sight of his teacher and friend, completely at ease in his presence, and the tranquil silence around them soothes the cold heaviness that seems to be filling his entire body, and Sakumo focuses on breathing through the twinges of pain in his back and chest until he feels all tension and hurt cede their place to a distant sort of pensiveness.

It feels like they’re in their own little bubble here, isolated from the rest of the world, even if there are animals and the sounds of battle and a girl curled up a few meters away he really needs to find the time to ask Orochimaru about. But right now, as he contemplates Orochimaru, Sakumo isn’t thinking about any of that, is thinking nothing but _oh_ as he admires midnight and golden and white and realizes—

He’s beautiful like this. Not that he isn’t usually, but right now, Orochimaru is utterly breath-taking, all flowing sleeves and sure movements. He’s perfection half-illuminated in the dappled sunlight, a waterfall of midnight silk against ivory skin and the dark purple of his kimono, the boneless grace of a shinobi (or possibly something more). 

And right now, in comparison to the dangerous predator Sakumo knows Orochimaru to be on the battlefield, he is deceptively harmless in appearance, golden eyes slid half-shut and his inherent beauty—fierce and wild—tucked away behind a serene façade.

And Sakumo is in love with all of it.

He’s in love with the androgynous sloping to Orochimaru’s face, with the bright golden eyes that could compete with sun and stars and gold for their beauty. He’s in love with ebony locks that seem to be spun of weighted silk, with the effortless grace to his movements, with the deft speed of slender, pale fingers. He’s in love with the glimpses he can steal of ivory skin, with the dark, calculating power to Orochimaru’s chakra. He’s in love with the Orochimaru on the battlefield, whose aura is dark and dangerous and deliciously addictive, and he’s in love with the Orochimaru who is a friend and half a mentor, who laughs at him and calls him an idiot but who is undeniably protective of him. He’s in love, and he’s realized that, at some point, his view of Orochimaru has moved from grudging respect to genuine appreciation and fondness.

And Sakumo is, most of all, in love with how much of Orochimaru the Sannin has let him see. He’s in love with how much obvious pleasure Orochimaru takes in teasing him, with how Orochimaru shows his concerns through barbed words and shows his encouragement through taunts. He’s in love with the way Orochimaru wields his words like Sakumo does his swords, and he’s in love with Orochimaru’s (laughably intense) competitive streak.

He’s in love with the way Orochimaru never verbally rubs in his victories but likes to send smug, taunting looks at him, and he’s in love with the way Orochimaru is most definitely a sore loser, because the Sannin might be far more talented than Sakumo is in ninjutsu, might have far more skills in his repertoire, but Sakumo has won more than enough spars to know that Orochimaru very much so dislikes losing. It’s never easy to win a spar against Orochimaru—the other tends to match him blow for blow—and the only reasons Sakumo ever does win is because the spars have been restricted solely to kenjutsu and/or taijutsu, fields in which Sakumo has a (slight) advantage over Orochimaru because Orochimaru wields Kusanagi masterfully, but Sakumo has been trained in kenjutsu since he could hold a wooden shinai in his hand. Beyond that, his kenjutsu is an amalgamation of the sword-fighting techniques various clansmen had taught him during his childhood and thus wildly unpredictable (with more than a few moves no ordinary person would dare to make), and it’s one of the fields he excels in the most—which is probably why the Sannin has been nursing his pride and denying those spars ever happened in the first place. And he’s in love with that too, the way Orochimaru pretended nothing was wrong but came back a week later with several new techniques up his sleeves and a demand for another spar.

Sakumo is in love with Orochimaru, from his personality to his actions to his aura, and he tilts his head to the side as the pieces in his mind slot together.

 _Oh,_ he thinks again, and, _this might be dangerous_ , but he doesn’t look away.

The most beautiful things are always the most dangerous, after all, and—

Well.

A little while longer of looking can’t hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *announcer voice* aaaaaaaaaaaaaand he's gay. he's gay. he's 501% gay (and possibly 499% pan) but mostly he's still gay for Orochimaru.
> 
> You can prolly tell I've been dying from the slow burn too. Personally, I think it's because of [this domestic fluff oneshot I wrote for Sakumo/Orochimaru for Christmas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9064237), but I feel like their relationship has advanced enough for Sakumo's epiphany to be realistic. They still have a long ways to go until it stops being preslash (i'm so sorry orz), but they're getting there.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the support and the reviews--RL has been really harsh on me lately, but when I feel really down, I just scroll through all the amazing comments you guys have left me. They really encourage me to keep going and cheer me up, so I sincerely appreciate those who take the time to say a few words.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	21. the white chakra of a Hatake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

Sakumo summons the barest flickers of chakra to his fingertips yet again, watching white sparks dance off his skin dispassionately.

“Why am I even doing this anymore?” he asks no one in particular, and cuts off the chakra flow in favor of dropping his arm to block the sunlight from his face.

He does his best not to move too much when stopping with the exercise shifts his focus to the bandages wrapped around part of his torso (mostly his abdomen) and the mixture tightly packed between the dressing and his skin. Orochimaru had thoroughly coated his wounds in the poultice about an hour ago, fingers feather-light against his skin, and while the mixture had at first been blissfully cool, it’s since turned lukewarm (and, perhaps even worse, it's still very much so uncomfortably moist--maybe even more so with his sweat and the slight humidity to the air). All in all, it's most definitely not an experience he wants to repeat any time in the near future (though the possibility of a repeat is, unfortunately, very high. Orochimaru had gathered a lot of plants, after all).

After another few moments of lazing off, he heaves a guilty sigh and reluctantly rolls over onto his side, arm flopping to the ground next to him before he starts the chakra exercise all over again. Supposedly, training his chakra like this will ensure a full recovery with any fluctuations caused by improper healing being smoothed over by constant and repetitive proper flux—or something along those lines. Sakumo hadn’t really been paying attention to Orochimaru’s science jargon at the time--too many long words in too short a time period. He did get the general gist of things, though—it's meant to help his chakra system and control without taxing his reserves too much—and he went along with it, chalking the rest of the explanation up to Orochimaru fretting in his own snarky way.

Beyond the exercise helping to reassure Orochimaru that Sakumo isn't going to kill himself or something along those lines, while chakra-sparking is repetitive (and a little dull because of that), it _is_ a little fascinating in its own way. It’s not often, after all, that he sees chakra in its purest form and is reminded of his own bloodlimit.

Even Orochimaru’s chakra, in its natural and unadulterated form, is the standard blue, though it danced between his fingers like a puppet at the ends of the strings of a member of Suna’s famed Puppeteer Corps. Sakumo’s own, however, is the unique white chakra distinctive to the Hatake bloodline, but it'snot something he tends to think much about unless he’s reminded of it. Most of the time when he uses his chakra, it’s internal where he can’t see it, or else it’s already been molded into another form of energy like genjutsu, or ninjutsu.

The exercise brings back some interesting memories too—one of his cousins had shown this to him before, when she was still alive and training her chakra control. She’d gone around for a full day with white chakra dancing up and down her arms, practically daring anyone to comment on the odd color. Nanako had always been...proud. Proud of her clan, and defiant towards anyone who would possibly think otherwise, enough so that she would take every opportunity short of emblazoning “Hatake” on her forehead to show which clan she belonged to.

(“I don’t like that they consider us a minor clan,” she tells him, not angrily, but sincerely. There’s something like indignation in her eyes, only…softer, in a way. _Hurt,_ and sad. “We don’t have a super powerful or super obvious bloodline limit like the Noble Clans, but we’re _strong_ , and I won’t let them forget that.”

“Kiyone doesn’t count as part of my bloodline, either,” she adds with a sharp look. Sakumo is four years old and still wholly trusting in his elders, so he simply looks back at her, head tilted curiously, and listens. “We don’t have the ability to tame animals or anything, and don’t let anyone else tell you we do. That’s disrespectful of our partners and of ourselves. I made friends with Kiyone with my blood, sweat, and tears, and every other Hatake has been the same way with their partners. Now, we’re lucky enough to grow up together, but just because Kiyone and I have played together for so long doesn’t mean we can _fight_ together, you know? We don’t have any mental magic sync or anything—you’ll understand more when you start learning proper fighting techniques, but Sakumo—don’t ever let anyone believe that we can skate by without training. You’ve seen me and Kiyone—we fight and train together every day, but we still mess up a ton of the time. Everyone else, too! We become partners—we become _one_ with our partners—because we work for it. To have people chalk it up to us being Hatakes, to our ‘bloodline’ is them spitting on how hard we’ve had to work to overcome the barriers between us and our partners. They call it our ‘bloodline,’ this ability to work with wolves, because no one else has done it, but really, it’s just that we have a dedication they don’t. That dedication isn’t our bloodline! Our bloodline isn’t working with animals—our partnerships and bonds are our own efforts! Our bloodline is this chakra!” she clenches her fist, and it abruptly lights up with a glowing white chakra.

She holds it out to him, uncurling her fingers slowly, and he watches in fascination as a sphere of chakra hovers in her palm, spitting out white particles of chakra that spark from its center and disappear into her skin and the air.

“This is our bloodline,” she says, and she looks all at once fierce and proud and unashamed. She places her chakra-covered hand on Kiyone’s side, and chakra crackles through the nin-wolf’s fur like static. The wolf nudges her partner’s cheek in response, and white sparks fly between them, going both ways.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Kiyone tells Sakumo reassuringly when she sees his look of concern. She doesn’t quite smile—most of the wolves don’t have facial features suited for such expressions—but there’s a kindly amused note to her voice as she continues, “Nanako and I have been practicing this for a while. Kama-oji-san and Takara-nee-san showed this one to us a few months ago because neither Takara-nee-san nor I have chakra systems as developed as the wolf summons. And while I can’t quite cast jutsu, I can channel this chakra into my attacks or other places.”

“This is our bloodline,” Nanako repeats, eyes bright with something like desperate pride. “White chakra. Rare and beautiful chakra that cannot be found anywhere outside our clan, a chakra that was given to us, _gifted to our ancestors_ , because they strove to partner with the animals of the wild, because they tried where no one else did, because they were strong and pressed on and did not give up. And it’s a gift that continues to be handed down to every Hatake born of blood because the gods continue to deem us worthy of this, as our inheritance, and as a blessing. And this is chakra that can be used by our partners in its natural form. Our inheritance, maybe, was willpower enough that we could form bonds with our partners, but our bloodline is a chakra gifted to us by the gods, so powerful we could share it with our partners through our bonds.”

Nanako clenches her fist in front of her again, and holds Sakumo’s gaze firmly, “Don’t forget this, Sakumo. They call us a minor clan, call our bonds a byproduct of our bloodlines, and dismiss what we have sacrificed to achieve those bonds. But those bonds are forged through trials of fire, and our bloodline can only deepen those bonds, not create them. If anyone calls your bonds your bloodline, you should punch them in the face. Our bloodline is our chakra— _do not forget this._ ”

Her eyes are glimmering with tears now, and her cheeks are flushed with emotion. And Sakumo is confused and unable to understand why this is so important to her, but he nods anyways and says quietly, “I won’t,” and she wraps him in a hug and whispers, “Okay,” into his hair)

Nanako’s words echo in his mind now, and, suddenly curious, he rolls back onto his back, lifting his hand above his head, and sends more and more chakra surging down his arm. He watches in fascination yet again as, just like Nanako’s once did, his entire palm starts emitting soft pulses of white chakra and showering down on him tiny particles that drift through the air like glittering snowflakes. They tickle as they fall and fade into the skin of his face, and when he pushes more chakra into his hands, his hand is encased firmly in a shining white, a flurry of tiny white dots of chakra starting to fall down upon him like a snowstorm. It’s beautiful, and for a moment he just admires the color and feeling of freshness and wildness to his chakra—

A hand wraps abruptly around his wrist, careless of the chakra gathered there. Sakumo starts, the ball of chakra in his hand automatically flaring to react to the threat—he hadn’t noticed anyone—and then a faintly irritated but mostly resigned (and very, very familiar) voice says, “I leave you alone for _half an hour_ , and I come back to you trying to kill yourself from chakra depletion. Why should I not be surprised?”

Sakumo blinks and lets the chakra in his hand dissipate into the air, “ _Orochimaru?_ ”

The dark-haired man sends him a vaguely annoyed look, eyes sharp, “Who else would it be?” and drops to the ground with a casual sort of grace to his movements, still holding Sakumo’s wrist. He runs the fingers of his other hand down Sakumo’s hand, examining it carefully, and asks, “Does this hurt?”

“No,” Sakumo automatically responds, and then he registers the question. “Why would it hurt?”

“…I recommended the chakra-sparking exercise to you precisely because it was unlikely to drain your chakra reserves by much,” Orochimaru comments, seemingly idly, but Sakumo has been with him long enough to know better.

He doesn’t say anything in response, simply shifts slightly on the ground into a so that his hair isn’t tickling his face anymore, and takes the chance to trail his eyes over Orochimaru’s face. He’s close—much closer than usual—and (even better) his attention is focused elsewhere, so Sakumo doesn’t have to bother about being subtle in his admiration. And—he’s always been aware of this, but it strikes him again that Orochimaru is absolutely gorgeous. Long, thick lashes lined with clan markings sweep down over golden eyes intent on Sakumo’s palm, and one long-fingered hand casually tucks dark strands of hair behind his ear, revealing a silver tomoe earring that glimmers in the sunlight. And then Orochimaru is speaking again, voice calm and low, and Sakumo has to tear his attention away and actually focus on what that lovely, velvety voice is saying.

“…stopped you before reaching that point, and you don’t seem to have damaged even your skin from chakra burns.”

“Chakra burns?” Sakumo latches onto that idea. “Um,” he tries to remember what Orochimaru is talking about, “wait—from my own chakra?”

Orochimaru hums in agreement, brushing his thumb over Sakumo’s hand before letting go, “It’s been known to occur. Less so with those who have trained with their chakra for a long time, but chakra moves in strange ways. You should be fine though, as I said, though I do wonder what prompted you to supercharge that exercise.”

“What? Oh,” Sakumo tries to ignore the amused glance Orochimaru is sending his way. It’s not _his_ fault Orochimaru is so ridiculously pretty his mind is having trouble coming up with words, “um. One of my cousins used to be really good with chakra control exercises, and she showed me that before. The sparking one too, but I didn’t know they were the same thing.”

“Not quite,” Orochimaru concedes, “but they’re close.”

He’s about to say more, but then there’s a small shuffle, a change in breathing, and both of them instantly still. Sakumo doesn’t try to get up—Orochimaru is more than talented enough to take care of any possible attackers, not to mention the patrols he’s certain both his and Orochimaru’s summons have set—but he does angle his neck towards the origin of the noise and watch the area carefully.

A few beats of silence pass, interspersed with rustling sounds, and then a head pokes out from around a tree trunk—a shock of messy, half-long white hair, similar to his own, coupled with bright blue eyes that blink warily at them.

“Rei,” Orochimaru calls, voice mild. “Come here.”

It’s decidedly odd, to hear him speaking as though to a skittish animal when he normally treats Sakumo as something of an equal, but it doesn’t seem to sound forced at all. Sakumo decides that he at the very least doesn’t mind the change.

The…girl (possibly? Or boy? Maybe _child_ would be a better term) starts a little in surprise, then nods quickly, scrambling over the roots of the tree and almost tripping in their rush over. They hesitate about an arm’s length away, a little uncertain and somewhat wary, before deciding to stay standing.

There is a moment of silence again, not quite long enough to be awkward, but long enough to be distinct, during which they evaluate each other and Orochimaru watches passively, and then Sakumo smiles up at the child and says, “I’d bow if I could, but I think Orochimaru might murder me if I move, so I’ll have to settle for a verbal greeting for now. My name is Sakumo. It’s nice to meet you; are you Rei?”

Blue eyes blink rapidly, startled, and then the head of white ducks in an awkward half-bow, “I—Yes. It’s nice to meet you too,” they echo, a little stiltedly. They hesitate for a moment, gaze flicking over the ground, before they add, “But I don’t think Orochimaru-sama would actually hurt you? He took very good care of you while you were in your healing sleep.”

He’s startled into silence for half a minute, casting a surprised glance at Orochimaru. Golden eyes stare back at his defensively, and then Sakumo laughs sheepishly, angling his arm to brush against Orochimaru’s leg apologetically.

“No,” he agrees easily, smiling at both Rei and Orochimaru. “I know he’d never hurt me like that. It’s good to have someone else acknowledge it, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Oro: you're gay enough that Rei has noticed. Congratulations.
> 
> fyi Rei does use she/her but Sakumo is fresh off injuries and not really paying attention to how Oro refers to her. Oro knows because that's how Seia refers to Rei, and Rei and Seia are close. Yeah. Just making sure.
> 
> And Nanako is from [the short extra I wrote for Aesoleucian a while back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8773492); she's the Hatake closest to Sakumo in age. Also something of a bookworm and scientist with a depth to her thoughts that isn't present in many children. And Kiyone is a nin-wolf, not a summon. Difference I made--she's like how I hc Tsume and Kuromaru, able to talk through the bond she has with her partner. I wanted to include more Hatake headcanons because my notebook is literally filled to bursting with them and I need to share. Also because white chakra is pretty and Hatakes are hardcore af and people don't appreciate their dedication to wolves enough.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	22. the inside of Manda's stomach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orochimaru: it's his _esophagus_ , Sakumo, not his stomach. Get it straight already.
> 
> Please enjoy.

Rei, as Orochimaru finds out, is pleasingly amicable and respectful. Sakumo seems to like her, which is…potentially troublesome (depending on how attached he becomes) but good for now. She is also obedient and doesn’t second-guess his orders—unlike certain students of his.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you—I do, with my life. It’s just…” Sakumo looks at him somewhat skeptically. He’s leaning heavily against the side of a tree trunk, having recently progressed to sitting and standing (with assistance), which signals enough recovery that they can move away from the clearing. It’s been a few days already, and Orochimaru doesn’t want to risk staying in this area any longer than is necessary—the battlefield is a good distance off, and their summons are patrolling almost constantly, but they’re still too close—which is the reason that, “You want me to let one of your summons _eat_ me. As much as I love your snakes, Orochimaru, I don’t exactly want to be _digested_ by them.”

 _I always have to pick up the troublesome ones, don’t I?_ he inwardly laments. _I should have known better after Anko,_ but he is patient as he explains (again), “It's _swallowing_ , not eating. Manda has enough self-control to prevent any peristaltic contractions, and we'll be close enough to his mouth that we won't be at risk of being unintentionally transferred into his stomach.” 

When Sakumo doesn’t look any more assured, he exhales sharply, sigh tinged with irritation and apprehension in equal measure ( _they aren’t safe here, and Sakumo can’t defend himself, why won’t he **listen** already_ ), and closes his eyes. _Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale_ , and when he speaks, his voice is calm and reflects none of the heavy frustration ( _apprehension_ ) tightly constricting his chest.

“It's best for us to clear this area as soon as we can," he explains gently. Sakumo is almost dangerously dedicated to fighting on this battlefield (to ending this war), but it's not something they can afford right now, and he wants Sakumo to understand his reasoning. "Neither you nor Rei can defend yourselves very well right now, and our summons are not infallible. There were a few small groups within the vicinity yesterday—one of them came very close to discovering us before I sent them off with a genjutsu. If we remain so close to the battlefield, you'll be putting yourself and Rei in unnecessary danger until you recover. Manda will take us to a more secure area where you can finish healing, and your recovery won't be set back at all by the journey." Another look at the reluctant set to Sakumo's face, and Orochimaru adds, voice soothing and assuring, "You don't need to worry. For all his posturing and threatening, Manda is perfectly harmless.”

“Harmless?” Manda splutters behind him. “ _Harmless?_ I kill for a puny human for thirty-nigh years, and he still dares to call me _harmless?!_ You ungrateful nestilng, I should eat you for that…" His hiss is low and sulky, “Harmless—I’ll show you harmless…”

Orochimaru ignores the snake’s threats with practiced ease (he’s known Manda long enough to know that they’re (mostly) empty) and looks at Sakumo expectantly.

“Um.” Sakumo looks more doubtful by the second, eyes shifting between the angrily hissing boss summons and the Sannin. “That may not have been the best idea?”

“We’ll be fine,” Orochimaru shakes his head. “As long as you cooperate. Manda can’t conceal his chakra signature for too long, and more people will come looking, so we’ll need to leave soon.”

“Do I even have a choice?” Sakumo mutters, almost inaudibly, but there's a surrender in his voice, and Orochimaru smirks at him, half victorious but mostly relieved, though he'd never admit it aloud.

“Did you ever think you did?” he counters, smirking even more as Sakumo grumbles under his breath, "Well, no, but I'd like to _think_ I did," and reluctantly pulls himself away from the tree so that Orochimaru can take on most of his weight.

Sakumo pauses before actually starting to limp forward, however, shooting a glance at Rei, who is peacefully sitting a few meters away and carefully weaving an almost-completed flower crown from the wildflowers growing nearby, "Rei, you don't seem to be worried at all over letting Manda eat you."

The girl looks up, blinking a few times in surprise, before she replies, voice placid and unworried, "Why would I be? Orochimaru-sama wouldn't let him hurt us, I'm fairly certain. And Seia told me that we wouldn't be enough of a meal for Manda-sama to consider eating us. Most snakes prefer hunting on their own, anyways—having food fed to them takes the thrill out of the chase."

Sakumo sweatdrops as, having stated her piece, Rei turns back to braiding the small flower crown. She finishes it in only a few seconds and offers it to Seia, who solemnly lowers her head to accept it. The crown is dropped daintily on Seia's head and considerately adjusted so that it doesn't block her vision, and Rei scrutinizes her work for a few seconds before nodding firmly in approval and picking a few more flowers to start a new crown.

"Manda prefers deer meat to humans," Orochimaru adds as he nudges Sakumo to start limping towards said giant snake. "They tend to travel in herds, which makes the meal more filling, and their speed makes the hunt last longer." He turns his head even as he continues helping Sakumo forward, "Seia, notify the others that we are leaving and have them return to the summons realm. Inform the wolves if you pass by them also, if you would. And Rei, roll up the storage scroll as tightly as you can so that it can fit into the scroll case beside it. Come over when you're done; I'll bring you up after Sakumo."

"Un!" Rei answers, scrambling to her feet and scattering the plucked flowers to the ground as she hurries over to the modified storage scroll they have that is unrolled across the forest floor.

It's a design he created himself, to allow it to store other sealing scrolls without the contents mixing together, and extremely detailed for that reason, with at least thirty different seals along its body and hundreds of characters scattered across it. If Jiraiya were with him, or Tsunade, they could probably have cut down the length by at least a full meter (even more if he had access to _both_ of them), but they aren't, and so, unrolled, the scroll is over seven meters in length. It takes such an inconveniently long time to find all the individual storage seals for each category of supplies (medical first aid, weapons, and rations, among other things) that to unroll it and retrieve all the dried herbs for Sakumo's medicine that he couldn't gather in the forest, he'd simply given Rei one end, held the other end of the scroll to the ground, and told her to open it across the ground. The remaining supplies have since been returned to their proper storage seals, but the scroll still needs to be rolled up and properly stored away. He spares a moment to watch Rei follow the scroll around the bases of several of the trees in vicinity and disappear out of sight before he returns his attention to his current task—keeping Sakumo from changing his mind.

As if on cue, Sakumo shifts uncomfortably, staring up at Manda's height, "Orochimaru...you're sure he's not going to eat us? He, uh...doesn't exactly look happy, if you know what I mean."

Manda's head shifts slightly towards them, one enormous eye glowering. "Don't worry, mutt," Manda hisses, something of a sneer hidden within his voice. "I wouldn't eat _you_ if you were the last thing alive."

They come to a halt, and Sakumo sends a half-insulted but mostly bewildered glance at Orochimaru. _Um?_ he mouths, and Orochimaru rolls his eyes. Manda can be ridiculously dramatic sometimes (and _no_ , as much as Jiraiya would wish to say otherwise, he is most certainly not being a hypocrite. His reactions are and always have been perfectly reasonable given the situation, thank you very much).

"There's nothing in particular that you've done wrong; he's simply irritated that I summoned him in the middle of his nap, despite the fact that I have already reassured him I would make up for it twice over," he sends a pointed look at his summons, who gives an irritated huff.

"A perfect nap is defined by a perfect position and a perfect mood and a perfect temperature, among other things in perfect quantities, none of which come together easily," Manda returns primly. "And you've interrupted my hard-found perfection not once, but twice already—and all for yet another bratling of yours!" the last part comes out in a savage, hateful hiss as Manda glares accusingly at a taken-aback Sakumo.

Orochimaru does his best to stifle his amusement. Anko and Manda's first meeting had...not gone very well for the latter, to say the least (Manda had flat-out refused to have anything to do with her after that. Anko, on the other hand, had been thrilled and came out of the meeting with a contract to the Snake Clan and maniacal giggles escaping her every once in a while. Orochimaru had chosen not to ask). It obviously doesn't work well—Manda sends him a furious glare and bares his fangs in threat, bone-white teeth even longer than Orochimaru is tall snapping down from their folded position and starting to drip with venom, " _Do not laugh at me, nestling._ "

"Yes, yes," Orochimaru says placatingly. There is a smirk threatening in his voice, "I'm sure it was all very traumatizing for you, one of the most powerful summons in the world, to lose to a nine-year-old genin."

"That bratling was _demon spawn_ , and you know it well," Manda hisses, sulking now, but keeps his mouth open in a silent invitation.

"...I get the feeling that I just missed something," Sakumo comments blankly, looking between the two of them. "What just happened?"

"Nothing important," Orochimaru waves one hand airily as he judges the distance between the ground and Manda's mouth (not far, since Manda is practically flat against the ground. The trees aren't nearly large enough to conceal his full height—he's hardly beneath the treetops as it is). "Now stay calm and don't make me drop you, alright?" he absently tells Sakumo. "That would be unpleasant."

"Wait, what? Oi—!"

Sakumo yelps as Orochimaru turns and sweeps him off his feet, his arms windmilling like he's not certain where to put them. One of them whacks the Sannin in the face, the other ends up hitting his shoulder, and he ends up clinging to the other's neck like his life depends on it.

Orochimaru sends him a flat stare, hair in disarray and numbness blossoming in his cheek.

" _That_ ," he informs his passenger icily, "was _not_ staying calm."

Sakumo winces in response, reaching out a hesitant hand in apology. When Orochimaru doesn't turn away, he cradles Orochimaru's cheek in his palm very gently, brushing his thumb over the area he'd struck the other. "I'm sorry. I hope I didn't hit you too hard," he says worriedly. His gaze is focused and concerned, "Does it hurt?"

There is something—something strange about how Orochimaru feels right now. Like his skin is tingling, like Sakumo's hand is burning, like he can neither move nor breathe and is fixed to this moment, is rooted to this indescribable feeling that is on the verge of overflowing. His lips part slightly, _say something, tell him it's fine, hurry, Manda is waiting_ , but he can't quite bring his vocal chords to work and make sound.

"Orochimaru?" Sakumo's thumb brushes over his cheek again, and his eyes move to lock with Orochimaru's. "Are you alright?"

Something pings, at the edge of his awareness, and Orochimaru blinks once, twice, and then inhales almost shakily, "I—yes. Yes. I'm fine," he says, and tears his eyes from Sakumo's as naturally as he can. "It's nothing." He shifts Sakumo in his arms, "I'm moving now," and takes a few quick steps before making a chakra-assisted bound over Manda's lower teeth.

They pass right between the fangs and land lightly on Manda's tongue, and Orochimaru walks a few meters inward before setting Sakumo down. It's a fairly open space, all things considering, and clean besides. It doesn't smell, either—Manda hasn't eaten for at least a month, and his last meal (almost two entire herds of moose) has long since been digested (he mentally makes a note to take Manda hunting soon, along with the bath in the basin he's carved out from the ground behind one of his labs as something like an onsen for his larger snakes).

"Wait here," he instructs Sakumo quickly. Something flutters at the edge of his awareness again. "I'll be back soon with Rei," and leaps away before the other has time for anything beyond a belated, "Wait, what?"

"On alert," he orders Manda as he lands softly on the ground. He casts a wary glance around—the forest certainly _seems_ peaceful, with no one in sight, but there's another ( _different, and forebodingly so_ ) unsettled feeling rising within him now. "Rei!" he calls sharply. "We're leaving!"

"Yes, Orochimaru-sama!" he hears her answer, and the girl ducks around a tree holding a slender but long metal scroll case in one hand. "Seia hasn't come back yet," she observes as she walks over. "Will you summon her later?"

"Yes, my summons have all dismissed themselves," he nods and extends a hand. "Come; I'll bring you—"

He cuts himself off, head snapping upwards and eyes narrowing. His chakra flares, and a sudden wind derails the storm of kunai aimed towards them as he lunges forward in a whirl of silk to wrap a firm hand around Rei's bicep, leaping backwards out of the way. A stream of explosive tags flutter from his sleeves—activated as they pass his fingertips but time-delayed, swept up by the wind to scatter across the forest floor amongst the leaves—and then Manda has lunged upwards and snapped his jaws around them, a surprised shout sounding, and they are plunged into darkness.

 _They noticed earlier than I thought they would._ His mind whirls through the implications of the attack, _Long-range; I couldn't see their hitai-ate through the tree leaves. Could it have been Konoha? They used the forest environment to their advantage, and an Iwa-nin would have tried to ambush us by hiding in the earth. There's a possibility they simply didn't have enough time for that, though, since they only approached us a little while ago. Their chakra was well-concealed; they must have moved in after the summons dismissed themselves. Why here specifically, though? Has someone been searching for us? For Sakumo?_

His mouth tightens into a grim slash because while he's not completely certain what to think of this ( _that's a lie, and he knows it. He knows exactly what to think of this—it's what he expected, after all, and he'd planned for it accordingly. The villages have taken an active interest in Sakumo, even more so than before, and whether the village is Konoha or Iwa or another village altogether—_ ), it's not a sign that bodes well.

"...Orochimaru-sama?" Rei's quiet voice sounds in the darkness, breaking him from his thoughts.

"Yes?" he answers before he realizes they're still standing sideways on the wall of Manda's esophagus. He cuts off the flow of chakra and drops lightly onto the floor before he loosens his grip on Rei's arm and lifts one hand, channeling chakra into it to throw their surroundings into light. It's a waste of chakra, he knows, but he can afford to waste it now that Manda is taking them somewhere safer. "Sakumo?" he calls softly.

"Above you," comes the answer, and he turns his head up. He raises a brow; Sakumo is chalk-white and has his back flattened against the ceiling a few meters or so above them. "I...don't think I can come down from here."

"...Do I even want to know how you ended up like that?" he wonders aloud, and when Sakumo opens his mouth, shakes his head. "That was a rhetorical question. I suppose you wouldn't be able to twist your body in time to land right if you dropped like that?"

"Yeah," Sakumo nods. "And I'm also really tired, so I don't think I can walk up or down the walls without dropping. Still, I can't hold this position for very long either."

"Manda's muscles do not make hard surfaces," he comments (it's true. Like most snakes, Manda's insides are incredibly flexible, and absorb impact well), but nonetheless gauges the distance between them and adjusts himself appropriately. "Come; I'll catch you if you drop." Sakumo doesn't move, and Orochimaru rolls his eyes, "I won't step away and let you fall, I promise. And I won't drop you either, unless you overreact again," he adds pointedly, and Sakumo smiles sheepishly at him.

"Alright." There is no question if Orochimaru can handle Sakumo's momentum—he wouldn't have offered if he couldn't have, and to assume otherwise would be an insult to his capabilities as a shinobi. "If you're ready?" Sakumo asks, more rhetorical than anything, and lets go without hesitation.

Orochimaru doesn't catch him so much as he transfers him to the floor, as smoothly as he can while holding raw chakra in one hand (which is actually fairly smoothly—a few meters is far from the greatest height he's ever caught someone, even with only a hand and a half). A quick diagnostic scan reveals no notable changes in condition except muscle exertion and chakra depletion, so he steps back to give Sakumo some room.

"You'll be fine, I think," he informs Sakumo, and turns his head. "Rei, did you want to say something earlier?"

"Ah?" Rei looks over from where she is sitting on the ground and curiously poking at the fleshy wall an arm's length away. "Oh...yes, I wanted to ask about the storage scroll. Would you like me to continue holding onto it, Orochimaru-sama?" she shifts closer, offering him the cylindrical scroll case.

"No, I'll store it away," he takes it from her hand. "It's good that you held onto it."

A cursory wipe against his clothes frees it of any stray dirt or foliage, and he tips his head back, wetting his lips and swallowing, before opening his mouth and carefully starting to slide the scroll case into his mouth. He doesn't actually need to tip his head back quite so far—experience and familiarity with this storage method have eliminated even the need to consciously relax his muscles, and he could probably store a case this slender in his sleep—but it makes the process go smoother and faster for that, and within a few moments, he's eased the scroll case down his throat to rest just inside his esophagus. Almost unconsciously, he swallows again—while he's learned to tolerate it, he's still not particularly fond of the taste of metal in the back of his throat—and then looks back down.

Rei is staring up at him, wide-eyed. He raises a brow at her, and she flushes slightly but nonetheless asks, curious, "Did that hurt?"

"No," he shakes his head, a little amused. Anko had reacted similarly the first time she witnessed how he stored some of his extra supplies and weapons, only she had almost immediately begun to clamor for him to teach it to her ( _"It's so cool, sensei! Think of all the stuff I could keep in there!"_ ). A glance at Sakumo tells him that the Hatake is in much the same state as Rei, eyes wide in surprise. He smirks at him, "Did you never wonder where I took our ration bars from?"

"Well—no, not really," Sakumo recovers quickly, mouth quirking upwards in a sheepish grin. "I thought you left them with your summons like I did with mine, actually."

Orochimaru hums and tips his head in acknowledgment, "A logical assumption. But no; while I've left more provisions with my summons, I always have the contents of at least two jounin wartime packs with me. It's best to be prepared, after all, especially for situations where immediate medical treatment is necessary."

"...You know, with all the stuff you brought with you, I probably should have realized that you'd carry a whole scroll of emergency supplies in your throat."

There's almost a disgruntlement to that remark, an annoyance at not having thought of something sooner, and Orochimaru smirks as he drops down next to Sakumo and comments, "You know, expecting too much of your brain will just set you up for failure."

Sakumo chuckles in response, dark eyes warm, "I haven't really been at my best lately, you're right." He smiles at him, soft and sincere and bright. "You don't have to worry, though; I'll make sure to take care of myself and recover well."

Orochimaru blinks at the seeming non-sequitur—he's fairly certain he'd just been teasing Sakumo, not voicing his concerns—but before he can respond, Sakumo has already leaned back and closed his eyes, ending the conversation.

He lets Sakumo rest.

It'll be a while yet before they arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snake esophagi can be half the length of their body and Manda is so big that his esophagus is open enough for them to stand in. And he can also keep himself from swallowing (and also esophagus peristalsis) so their traveling is okay. The esophagus thing is also how Orochimaru stored Kusanagi in canon (and the canister here)
> 
> Also I'm really sorry this is a day late? It kind of...spiralled away from me. A lot. Like it's over 3.5k and they didn't even make it out of Manda's mouth??? I think editing actually made it longer? o.O possibly because I've been functioning off 3 hours of sleep a night for the past few days ~~weeks~~ , but yeah, I definitely didn't expect it to get so long.
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	23. the safehouse in the woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

It’s dark outside, when Manda finally stops. Orochimaru almost doesn’t realize it at first, lulled by the passing of time and the steady drain of chakra from the small ball of light in his hands into the trance-like state of consciousness distinctive to keeping watch. It takes him a moment to register the breeze that blows past him and the foreign freshness and chill to it, but when he turns his head, he can see through the opening of Manda’s mouth the world outside, dimly lit by the moon and stars yet still brighter than the muted blue light his own chakra offers.

 _Ah,_ he thinks, distant and detached. _We’ve arrived,_ but he doesn’t move just yet. Rei and Sakumo are sleeping soundly beside him, breathing soft and even, and the simultaneously aware but drifting state of mind that comes from keeping watch for so long is slow to release him from its grasp. 

Before long, however, the tranquility cloaking his mind has slipped away, and in its place comes the pressing reminder that Manda has traveled a long ways to bring them here, and is likely in need of rest. Absently, he disperses the chakra gathered in his hands and nudges Sakumo's head off his shoulder, rising to his feet with only the softest of sighs to betray his own exhaustion. There's a sleepy murmur as Sakumo pitches over and curls around the area Orochimaru was sitting, and an amused smile tugs at Orochimaru's lips as he steps soundlessly over to where Rei is slumbering. He doesn’t wake her, only bends down to gather her carefully into his arms and waits for her to settle sleepily into a comfortable position before he restarts his movement, keeping his gait smooth so as to avoid disturbing her rest.

Seia is coiled at the edge of Manda’s mouth under a pool of moonlight. She doesn’t rise to meet his approach, but she turns her head to watch as he passes.

“Stay with Sakumo, should he wake,” he instructs her quietly. “I will return for the two of you shortly,” before he leaps over Manda’s lower row of teeth and into the forest of Hashirama trees below.

They are in Fire Country now, only a day’s travel from Konoha, where trees like these are common. The branches are thick and many, even so high off the ground, and they form something of a staircase for him as he descends. Orochimaru lands on the forest floor silently, surrounded on all sides by trees that, like his dreams, reach for the heavens, and for a moment simply breathes, lungs filling with the crisp night air and mind latching onto familiar and warm chakra signatures. There's no one in the vicinity who does not belong, so he only checks to make sure Rei is comfortable (she's sound asleep, which he'll take as a yes) before he turns to follow a path of blossoming fairy slippers that winds its way through the undergrowth to cluster around the base of a Hashirama tree. He slips between one of the many gaps in its massive roots, holding Rei closer to his chest so that they can slip more easily through the admittedly small entrance, and drops down by about a meter or so, the scent of cool earth rising up to meet them. The air is chilly here, even more so than it is above ground, and Rei stirs slightly before pushing closer into him, so he doesn't wait before starting to walk at a brisk pace deeper into the darkness. As he goes, he lets his chakra expand outwards, watching as seals etched into hardened clay recognize his chakra signature and light up with blue to illuminate a high-ceilinged tunnel just wide enough for three grown adults to pass through side by side.

This is, along with what it leads to, the result of a naïve and idealistic dream that never came into fruition, several jutsu, and a solid month’s work, finished almost two full years before he left Konoha. A fool’s venture, perhaps, but the effort he’s put into it has since come to good use. He follows the path through twists and turns and forks in the road with a swiftness born from familiarity, and slows as he approaches the simple but well-guarded door at the end of the tunnel.

“Karu, Akane,” he greets his mother’s summons with a respectful nod, voice low. “It’s good to see you both.”

“It’s been a while, kohebi,” Akane agrees, slithering over to him with deep red scales glimmering in the light. She circles him as he does his best not to trip over her coils (not an easy task, given that they are thicker than he is around the waist), and periscopes mere centimeters away from Rei’s sleeping face, tongue flicking out, “My, my, you’ve found another one so quickly? And a pretty one too, though she seems underfed—how strange, when she has both your and Seia’s scents on her.”

“We found her only recently,” he answers her implied question a little distractedly as he tries to avoid stepping on her, “but Rei is already better than she was,” and then he gives up trying to move.

Almost every square centimeter of the ground within a full meter of him is covered by Akane’s body, and he sends her an exasperated look but lets her inspect Rei to her heart’s desire. It only takes a few moments before she pulls away approvingly and slithers back to her position as one of the sentinels of this safehouse.

“Welcome back, kohebi,” she hisses in tandem with Karu, and as the seals on the door between them respond and unlock, he rolls his eyes.

“I’m fully grown now, you know,” he murmurs as he passes between them to open the door, but he’s resigned himself to the fact that it’s a moot point by now, and neither of his mother’s serpents deign that with a response. Despite his protests, however, there’s something of a smile on his face as he answers them with “I’m back,” before he pushes open the door and enters the closest thing he now has to a home.

*

The shoji door to the sleeping area slides open as he’s settling Rei into one of the spare futons, unsuccessfully trying to coax her into letting go of his hair. Ignoring the awkward angle to his neck, he turns his attention to the entrance of the room; Kou is holding the frame to the shoji door, honey-brown hair falling in a tangled mess to brush the edges of his sleeping yukata.

“O-Orochimaru-sama, welcome back,” wide eyes blink owlishly at him before they fully take in his situation. “Oh! Let me help.”

The boy hurries over, steps swift and sure over the blanket-clad forms of the other children in the room, and within a few moments, has successfully untangled Rei’s fingers from the fistful of black that she had been bringing dangerously close to her mouth. Orochimaru nods at him in thanks, and, once he’s tucked a thick comforter around Rei and she has settled back into the mattress, he gestures Kou outside, sliding the shoji door shut behind them and moving a few steps down the hallway.

“Has everything been well?” he asks softly, and briefly lays an apologetic hand on Kou’s head when the boy yawns. “Don’t worry; I won’t keep you long.”

“No, I can report now,” Kou shakes his head. “Not much happened, anyways. A few days ago, while they were playing outside, Sora and Yasu tried to climb the garden walls so that they could leave and find you, but the protections on the garden stopped them before they could get very high. Oh, and Atari hasn't really been feeling well lately; we think she might have gotten sick or something. She's been resting, though, and I think she said she was feeling better, but Yasu is still a little worried.”

Orochimaru nods, “I'll check to make sure it's nothing severe tomorrow,” and Kou smiles up at him shyly, eyes shining with gratitude.

“Other than that, I don't think there was anything else worth noting. Akane-san checks in on us a few times every day, and Atari and I have been alternating cooking with Karu-san as supervisor. We've also been following training scheduling, though Sora and Yasu were a little distracted due to your absence. We missed you very much,” he ducks his head a little bit, voice suddenly shy as he looks up at Orochimaru through his bangs.

The Sannin nods before gently turning him around and starting to steer him back towards the sleeping area, “That’s enough for now. Go to sleep now, Kou; you’ve worked hard. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay,” Kou nods sleepily, yawning again as he pushes the shoji door open. “Thank you, Orochimaru-sama. Good night.”

“Rest well,” Orochimaru answers quietly, and lingers just long enough to see Kou slip under the covers of his futon, between Atari and Sora, before he shuts the door and turns away with a soft sigh.

 _Five of them,_ he thinks, _and Sakumo as well. This could be troublesome,_ but he doesn't regret anything, and especially not his choice to care for Sakumo, nor the four—five now, including Rei—nestlings now in this safehouse. This has always, after all, been intended as a sanctuary and a home, even if it had originally only been meant to be shared with those he'd claimed as 'his' (though, to be fair, they too are 'his' now). The nestlings' chakra signatures (so bright, so warm, so _happy_ ) lessen the painful knowledge that most of the remaining rooms in the hallway are unlikely to ever house their intended occupants (he very carefully does not think of Jiraiya's and Tsunade's and Anko's intended rooms, which are separated from his by only a sliding door, and especially not Sarutobi-sensei's, which is complete with a small smoking veranda that, like the garden, is heavily warded and open to the air). They've left marks of their presence scattered around the house—chakra imprints, spare clothes, extra towels, practice weapons—and those have all helped to fill up the empty spaces in the rooms, softening the distinct absence of 'his' that he'd been keenly aware of the first few months he'd lived here. And...it's good, too, to know that they have each other now. They are like him—outcasts and survivors, each and every one of them, who at one point had only been able to rely on themselves, and he knows that that is sometimes too much for one person to bear alone.

Kou he found crying in the middle of what might once have been a bustling village of Fire Country but had been burned down into an empty smoking hull. _I’m sorry,_ he’d sobbed. _It’s all my fault. I'm sorry; they scared me, and I shouldn’t have burned them, but they were hitting me and they called me a monster, and they were **right** , but I didn't mean to hurt them, I promise, but I thought they were trying to kill me and I was so **scared** that I just screamed, and everyone ran away, and I don't even know what happened anymore, I'm sorry, please let them come back to me._

Atari and Yasu he came across on the outskirts of a sprawling merchant village in Wind Country. He was only been passing through then, but paused when he saw Atari where she was chatting casually with a street vendor, a cheerfully innocent smile on her face while nimble fingers stole a solid loaf of bread from right under the vendor's nose. When she gracefully excused herself and turned to merge with the faceless crowd, it was with a skip to her step and a jaunty wave and a smile almost instantly replaced by a fierce and scornful scowl. Interest piqued, he followed her into the less reputable parts of the village, where she promptly slid into a side-alley towards a coughing bundle of cloth that had a chakra reserve that could rival that of a chuunin. _Hey,_ she whispered, _I got some food. It's hot and fresh out of the oven; you'll be good in no time, Yasu!_ but her voice wavered on the last sentence, and the bundle of cloth rasped out, _Don't lie to me, Onee-chan. I'm going to die; even the healers say so. You should just forget about me and go back to Okaa-sama and Otou-sama. They can afford to keep you now that they don't have to pay for my medicines anymore,_ and the girl shook her head, tears running down her cheeks, and vowed, _Never._

Sora he picked up in some alleyway in Lightning Country, one of the many abandoned children inhabiting the red-light district. _Back off,_ the boy warned the two other children in front of him, voice somewhere between snarling and mocking. _I can hear your hearts. You’re looking for someone to boost your egos because you lost a fight, and you’re thinking I’ll be easy to beat. And now you’re wondering how I knew that, and you’re scared, realizing all of those rumors about me were true, and you’re not sure whether to run or not. Ah, and you’re calling me a monster now._ His voice is dark and mocking, _Why don’t you run then?_ And when the two practically fled his sight, the boy turned milky eyes to stare directly at Orochimaru where he was perched on a ledge above him, half-hidden in the shadows. _You’re thinking I have potential, even though I’m blind,_ he states, voice surprised, and Orochimaru wonders why. _All the shinobi who’ve seen me before left when they realized I couldn’t see._ A soft laugh, _You think they were the blind ones? …Alright. I’ll come with you if you’ll teach me how to fly._

They're outcasts, and they're jaded and bitter, and maybe most people would call them monsters, but Orochimaru knows better ( _oh,_ does he know better). They're _skilled_ , is what they are, not the monsters jealousy makes them out to be, and he knows this because they're still human and they still have tears to shed (he, on the other hand, has long since accepted and moved past the fact that everyone cares only for themselves and who or what is theirs). Kou still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, terrified he's burned everything down. Atari still weeps when she remembers the betrayal of her parents and clings desperately to her sister when Yasu is out of sight for more than a few minutes. Yasu still walks around in tearful awe of the world and the fact that she's still alive. Sora still retreats into a corner of the garden to have a meltdown when he's overwhelmed by the constant noise of their thoughts. And all of them still disconnect from reality and look at their home, look at him, look at each other, look at _themselves_ and think, _maybe this is just a dream_ (Sora says, _all of us have, more than once_ ), and they still shy away when he offers to take them to an actual human village, but...

They're better. They're scared (or wary, or scornful) of people, but they're better than they were, survivors and all the better for it. They are _kintsukuroi_ , broken and repaired with gold, and stunning because of it, and if no one will see it and they continue to be outcasts—well, it doesn't matter. They can be outcasts together.

(He thinks Sakumo is something like them, too. A bright and shining star, a hidden jewel with so much untapped potential, cast away by fools blind to his brilliance. But at the same time, Sakumo is different, something so much _more_ , because Sakumo was already radiant without Orochimaru, and to him, Orochimaru is less a trainer and more a partner (though if he's any less a caretaker towards Sakumo is up to debate). Still, he thinks the nestlings will like Sakumo. Outcasts and survivors (and monsters like him) tend to be more accepting of each other, and even if Sakumo isn't quite the same (or, perhaps, is better at pretending he is comfortable with people and happy with the world, but Orochimaru personally is of the opinion that Sakumo genuinely _is_ that way), Sakumo too is broken, an outcast and most assuredly a survivor. So he's fairly certain they will like Sakumo. They're all alike, after all)

(They are stars in the making, masterpieces repaired with gold, and there is so much beauty in the way they have survived and then gone on to thrive. And they're not the world's to destroy anymore—they're _his_ now, and he doesn't regret claiming any of them)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More headcanons~ Orochimaru tends to adopt strays as his own (Sound, anyone?) and has a secret underground hideout (with a heavily warded garden open to the sky) very close to Konoha intended as a sanctuary/retreat for the Sannin (and their tagalongs).
> 
> The inclusion of kintsukuroi (the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with veins of gold/other precious things) was suggested by Kri-Kee. Like komorebi, it's one of the very pretty Japanese words I was afraid I'd never get to use, so thank you for that suggestion! :) It's not what they had in mind, probably, but I liked the idea of applying that to people.
> 
> While on the topic of reviews: thank you to everyone who has ever left me a kudos or bookmarked my story or commented. I was feeling pretty stressed/depressed a few days ago, but then I read through all 11 pages of conversations I've had with you amazing people and honestly started crying and laughing because you guys are so lovely and kind to me. Thank you <3
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.


	24. the children

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy.

_Otou-san, Otou-san!_ Kakashi’s voice calls to him, happy and bright and brimming with excitement in a way that never fails to make Sakumo’s heart melt.

 _What is it?_ he asks, smiling. _Did you learn some amazing jutsu at the Academy today?_

 _Otou-san,_ Kakashi would sound almost annoyed if it weren’t for the pout in his voice. _I told you yesterday we were still on chakra control! Weren’t you listening?_

 _My bad, my bad,_ he laughs. _Did you make a friend then?_

 _No,_ a phantom hand slips into Sakumo’s own. _They talk too much. Guess again._

 _Hm…well then, did you win a spar?_ he asks, voice light and curious; it’s the only other option he can think of right now.

 _Not just one spar,_ Kakashi’s voice is smug. _They moved me up to the second-year’s taijutsu class, and I won individual spars against everyone in the lower tier._

Sakumo laughs, surprised and proud, ignoring the apprehension rising up to squeeze his throat, _Everyone in the lower tier? That’s a lot of people! Let’s make saury and eggplant when we get home; it must have been tough to win so many spars in one day!_

 _They weren’t that good,_ Kakashi says modestly, but he sounds pleased. _Are you sure we still have saury leftover from last time?_

 _Ah, my little scarecrow, all grown up,_ a teasing grin rises to his lips. _You don’t have to worry about any of that. I picked some up this morning after I dropped you off at the Academy._

 _Can we make it together then?_ Kakashi asks eagerly, and Sakumo smiles.

_Of course._

And then the dream is finished, and Sakumo is (more or less) awake.

 _Ah..._ he gazes sightlessly into the darkness of his closed eyelids, breathing soft and steady. _He’s probably already in the third-year classes,_ he thinks distantly. He has the feeling that he should probably be feeling worry for Kakashi’s future, or sorrow that he’s been pushed out of Kakashi’s life so thoroughly, but right now, everything is being overshadowed by the utter peace and content and love their dream-conversation had been filled with. _He’s graduating in a month or two, isn’t he? I wonder if he’ll accept my graduation gift for him—maybe I should leave it for him at that apartment he’s staying at. Hopefully he won’t throw them away. High-quality equipment is important for a shinobi, after all, and he’s had his current set for almost two years now…_

He shifts slightly beneath the blankets, absently noticing the warmth they provide and the slight chill against his cheeks, _I wonder where Orochimaru brought us…likely a safehouse he frequents often._ The air smells of tatami and freshness, and he can tell that the mattress cushioning the floor and the blankets pulled over him were recently aired out. It feels like heaven, in comparison to his sleeping conditions for the past month, and he toes the line between consciousness and sleep for another few minutes, lazy from how comfortable his current position is, before he finally lets his eyes drift all the way open.

Four pairs of eyes peer curiously at him, surrounding him on all sides, and he’s too startled to react consciously. By the time his back has twinged in warning and his mind has caught up to him, he’s already whipped the blankets off his body towards the strangers and twisted into a half-crouch on the other end of the futon. Although the blankets are light enough on their own, the force with which he throws them all but bowls over what he now sees to be four children, and he instantly winces.

 _That…probably wasn’t the best idea,_ he realizes as the four of them go down with startled cries. To make things even worse, a ringing almost immediately starts up in his ears, and black dots outlined in neon begin to dance over his spinning vision. For a moment, he can’t see, and he feels himself start swaying, but as he gingerly lowers himself to sit back down onto the futon, he reaches out in concern. “Sorry,” his voice sounds faraway even to his own ears. The dizzy spell is fading, though, even as he apologizes, “You startled me. Are you alright?”

“We’re okay!” a bright voice calls out amidst the sounds of cloth shuffling. Sakumo blinks the lingering spots out of his vision to see the children surfacing from the many folds of the blankets. They look unharmed, and the youngest-looking has a cheerful smile on her face as she adds, “It didn’t hurt. We probably shouldn’t have been so close to you anyways; Orochimaru-sama warned us not to bother you, but we were really curious.”

“ _You_ were curious, you mean,” the boy next to her rolls white eyes haughtily, and then, as if the girl has said something, adds, “It is, and you know it. If you hadn’t suggested it, we would have just put our stuff away and left him alone.”

In response, his friend (sister?) puffs out her cheeks, “Well, _I_ wasn’t—”

“ _Technically,_ no, but you have to admit that nothing would’ve happened if—”

“It was your idea in the first place—”

“How was I supposed to know that—hey, my ability doesn’t extend _that_ far—don’t say that! It’s more useful than _yours_ at least—”

Sakumo looks blankly between the two of them as they start squabbling, mind filled with half-finished questions that mainly involve the words _Orochimaru_ and _what_ , and then looks at the older two children. The girl returns his gaze, eyes assessing but not hostile, but the boy only spares him a curious glance before stepping between the still-bickering duo.

“Yasu, Sora,” he says, and even though his voice is soft, the two quiet almost instantly to look up at him. He smiles at them, “Let’s finish cleaning up, okay? Orochimaru-sama is still waiting for us.” 

As if on cue, the shoji door slides open, and Orochimaru steps in, nodding in response to the collective "Good morning!" that arises from the four children.

“Rei and I have finished preparing the breakfast dishes,” he informs them calmly. “If you've finished storing your things away, she is still in the kitchen and would appreciate some help with portion sizes and individual servings.”

There is a chorus of “Yes, Orochimaru-sama!”s before all but the youngest file out of the room. As the girl hurriedly returns to folding her futon mattress, golden eyes turn to Sakumo expectantly, one fine brow rising when the silence drags on for too long.

“Uh…Good morning?” Sakumo offers hesitantly, still extremely confused about everything that's going on right now, and Orochimaru smirks at him.

“Good morning,” he returns, voice amused. “Are you hungry? I have ration bars for you to eat here while the five of us have breakfast in the dining room,” but his voice is light, and the look in his eyes is teasing.

“I could do with some actual food,” Sakumo agrees easily to the implied invitation, grinning up at Orochimaru as he takes the other’s offered hand. He levers himself up carefully, and Orochimaru slips an arm around his back as he helps Sakumo limp forward. “I’m feeling a bit more firm on my feet now,” he notes, glancing sidelong at Orochimaru. “You said the reason I didn’t have much strength before was the damage to my chakra system effecting the rest of my body, right?”

“And a few muscle strains and tears, yes,” the Sannin nods, “although those are also injuries that tend to be better off healing naturally. They don’t usually take much time to heal, especially due to your accelerated healing rate and chakra working together. It’s good that you can feel your condition improving, anyways; you’ll probably be able to start running some minor exercises within a week.”

“What happened to you?” a curious voice interrupts, and he looks down to see the girl from earlier walking slowly beside him.

“I was stupid,” Sakumo answers, an easy smile on his face, and he laughs when she looks at him dubiously, “or, well, Orochimaru says I was. I think I did okay.”

“He was caught off-guard by a member of Iwa’s Explosion Corps, Yasu,” Orochimaru clarifies, sending him an exasperated look Sakumo just grins sheepishly in response to. 

“What, really? And you survived? That’s _so cool,_ ” she breathes, looking up at Sakumo in awe. “What was it like? Did it hurt? Do chakra burns feel like real burns or is chakra too different from fire? Do they heal the same way? I mean, Kou burned me a few times while we were sparring, and the burns were always super annoying, but they didn’t take that long to heal, but Orochimaru-sama said that it’d take you a whole _week_ to go back to light exercises. Why is it taking so long for you? Did you get burned super-badly? Or is it just because its chakra? Or—”

“Yasu,” Orochimaru interrupts her rapid-fire questions patiently, and Sakumo sends him a grateful look, mind still spinning from earlier, “remember not to ask your questions all at once if you want an answer to them. Why don’t you go and help the others set the table? We can discuss the details of Sakumo’s injury later.”

“Yes, Orochimaru-sama!” she salutes, a bright smile on her face, before she hurries ahead down the hallway.

When she's out of sight, Sakumo turns to Orochimaru, letting his complete and utter bewilderment bleed through into his voice as he says, “So, uh...mind telling me what's going on?”

The Sannin doesn't turn, but one side of his lips tug up in wry amusement, “I assume they didn't bother explaining anything then?” and when Sakumo makes a noise of agreement, he sighs, though he doesn't sound particularly surprised, “I see. Well then, in case you haven't noticed yet, we’re in one of my safehouses. It's in constant use, as you can probably tell from the presence of the children; they live here, I suppose you could say.”

“Are they orphans?” he questions softly, and Orochimaru glances briefly at him.

“Yes.” There's a myriad of emotions in Orochimaru's voice when he responds, and Sakumo can hear a sort of tired resignation within his words that resonates with the heaviness in his own heart, the tightness in his throat. “Or as good as,” Orochimaru adds, and Sakumo doesn't ask (war, he knows, is not a time that families tend to thrive).

“What are their names?” is what he says instead. “I didn't catch all of them,” and he's certain Orochimaru knows why he's moved on so quickly, but he's grateful the other accepts the shift in conversation.

“That was Yasu, just now,” a dark head tips in the direction they're heading. “She's seven now. Her elder sister, Atari, is fourteen. Kou is also fourteen; he works with Atari to keep Sora's and Yasu's antics under control. And Sora would be the younger boy; he's eight years old. They're a fairly responsible group of children, which is why I've let them stay here without constant supervision. They've learned to contain their more destructive bouts of creativity to the less fragile areas of the house; Kou in particular is good at keeping their experiments from getting out of hand, as they occasionally forget to think things through. Expect many more questions, by the way; they're very curious, as you've seen with Yasu, especially about each person's abilities in comparison to others'. While they're still experimenting with their own, they'll no doubt want to explore yours and Rei's as well, and...”

Sakumo listens to the rise and fall of Orochimaru's voice, hears the half-resigned, half-fond undertone to his words, looks at the faintly upturned corners of Orochimaru's lips, and smiles.

 _I think I'll be able to deal. After all, if they're anything like you are,_ he thinks warmly, _I'm sure I'll like them._

And that's that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for being so wonderful and lovely and sweet to me, by the way~~~
> 
> 9/13: promise I'm alive, just suffering >_< apologies for my constant delays omg I can't believe I let RL and writer's block take over for so long??? I've been working through some really consistent problems with my immune system/health and also relationships lately but I promise you I'm still working with chapter 25 :)) thank you guys again for your patience <3
> 
> Please review. Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you for reading.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover Art for Starry_Fantasies when the world comes crashing down (I'm here)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8181949) by [kodonaprince](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kodonaprince/pseuds/kodonaprince)




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